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THE DIRECTION 
OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2011 witii funding from 
The Library of Congress 



Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/directionofliuman02conk 



THE DIRECTION OF 
HUMAN EVOLUTION 



BY 

EDWIN GRANT CONKLIN 

PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
AUTHOR OF "HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEN," ETC. 



NEW EDITION WITH PREFACE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1922 






Copyright, 1921. 1922, st 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Printed in the United States of America 




JUN 20 1922 
©CI.A674643 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

During the past few years, and especially with- 
in the past twelvemonth, there has been a remark- 
able recrudescence of the old theological opposition 
to the theory of evolution, especially as applied 
to man. In spite of the great amount of evidence 
which has been accumulating during the past half 
century with regard to the evolution of man, it is 
probable that nothing more ignorant, frenzied, or 
intolerant has ever been uttered against this theory 
than has appeared during the past year. 

No scientific investigator of ten years ago would 
have thought it possible that the truth or falsity 
of any scientific theory would ever again be de- 
cided by appeals to the Bible, or that an attempt 
would ever again be made to determine by legis- 
lation what might be considered orthodox or heter- 
odox science; and yet this has come to pass. An 
organization has been perfected among certain 
religious denominations for the purpose among 
other things of banishing modernism and partic- 
ularly the theory of evolution from churches and 
schools. Its plan of campaign has been outlined 
in part as follows: 

"In order to purify the institutions where mod- 



vi PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

ernism is taught we must discipline and reform 
these institutions. . . . Our universities, reeking 
with the unbeHef of an evolutionistic false phi- 
losophy, are the most dangerous centres in Amer- 
ica. . . . Our government has undertaken to 
regulate business, but the hour has come to regu- 
late our education. . . . The use of the evolu- 
tionary hypothesis must be abandoned. . . . The 
new theology and modernism must be separated 
from our institutions of learning. . . . This splen- 
did organization could in all probability succeed 
in cutting off most of the financial support from 
these institutions, if not in actually bringing about 
their total destruction." * 

Acting upon this last suggestion, bills have been 
introduced in certain State Legislatures forbidding 
the teaching of evolution or Darwinism, as applied 
to man, and in one instance such a bill came with- 
in one vote of being passed. Text-books that teach 
evolution, even as an incidental part of biology or 
geology, have been condemned and placed on the 
index prohibitus of this new Inquisition, and it is 
said that funds are being raised to endow and make 
perpetual this fight against evolution. 

All this is done, we are told, to save the religious 
faith of the younger generation. Apparently the 
leaders in this movement do not realize that they, 
and not the evolutionists, are making it impossible 

* From The Christian Century, April 28, 192 1. 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION vii 

for young men and women who are intellectually 
enlightened to remain in their denominations. It 
is a dangerous thing for defenders of the faith to 
affirm, as these do repeatedly, that one cannot be 
a Christian and an evolutionist at the same time, 
for students of nature who find themselves com- 
pelled by the evidences to accept the truth of evo- 
lution will be apt to conclude that they must there- 
fore count themselves as opponents of the churches. 
The worst form of infidelity is not disbelief in doc- 
trines, whether theological or scientific, but dis- 
belief in the ultimate triumph of truth. If evo- 
lution is false, it cannot be saved by science; if it 
is true, it cannot be destroyed by theology. 

In general, the opponents of evolution have 
neither the technical ability nor even the desire 
to weigh critically the evidences for the truth of 
evolution. Properly to appreciate these evidences 
requires some first-hand knowledge of morphology, 
physiology, embryology, ecology, paleontology, 
and genetics. In science it is necessary to see and 
handle actual materials and processes in order 
to appreciate their significance, as all who have 
worked in laboratories know. The advice which 
Huxley gave to the "paper philosophers" of his 
day is still good advice: "Get a little first-hand 
knowledge of biology." But the opponents of 
evolution not only lack such first-hand knowledge, 
they usually have no desire to get it second-hand 



viii PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

from those who have studied nature. One of these 
denouncers of Darwin, when asked if he had ever 
read his books, repHed: '^I wouldn't touch them 
with a ten-foot pole." Neither facts, evidences, nor 
sweet reasonableness can penetrate such an armor. 
With very few exceptions, the whole scientific 
world long since was convinced of the truth of 
evolution, and every year which has passed since 
the publication of the "Origin of Species," in 1859, 
has added to the mountain of evidence, which has 
been piled up in its favor. It is fortunately not 
necessary here to review those evidences, for they 
may be found in almost every elementary text- 
book on biology, as well as in hundreds of treatises 
and scientific journals. These evidences are so 
numerous and come from so many sources that 
no intelligent man can study them at first hand 
and not be convinced of their importance. As a 
consequence there is probably not a single biological 
investigator in the world to-day who is not con- 
vinced of the truth of evolution. The fact that 
these evidences accumulate year after year, com- 
ing sometimes from fields which Darwin and his 
contemporaries never dreamed of, is still more 
convincing. Lord Kelvin, the great physicist, 
once said that any hypothesis or theory, if true, 
should find new support continually as knowledge 
advances. This is just what has happened in the 
case of evolution. 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION ix 

The opponents of evolution make much of the 
fact that it is only a theory or an hypothesis, but 
in this respect evolution does not differ from any 
other great generalization of science. The evi- 
dences for the major transformations in the evo- 
lution of man are not personal demonstrations, 
since they do not fall within the lifetime of a single 
individual, but they are the same sort of evidences 
as those for mountain building, stream erosion, 
glacial action, or any other secular change. Those 
who urge as an objection to evolution that it is 
only a theory neglect to say that their own views 
as to the origin of man can be dignified by no higher 
title. As between evolution and special creation 
we have to choose between two theories or hypoth- 
eses, and it is merely a question of evidence as 
to which is the more probable. All the evidence 
available supports the theory of evolution, it con- 
tinually receives fresh support from new discover- 
ies, it is not contradicted by any scientific evidence. 
Can the supporters of the theory of special creation 
say as much ? 

Uncertainty among scientists as to the causes 
of evolution has been interpreted by many non- 
scientific persons as throwing doubt upon its truth. 
It is plain that the causes are complex and that 
they have not yet been fully discovered; it is even 
probable that some of the proposed causes are 
erroneous and will have to be abandoned. But 



X PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

the same may be said with regard to the causes 
of gravitation, light, electricity, chemical affinity, 
life, or any other natural phenomenon. It is not 
fair or honest to quote the doubts of scientists 
regarding the causes of evolution as if they con- 
stituted an abandonment of the theory itself, espe- 
cially when these same scientists in the same con- 
nection affirm that no informed person can doubt 
the truth of evolution. The fact of evolution is 
no longer in question among men of science; pres- 
ent uncertainty and doubt concern only the fac- 
tors or causes. The problem of cause is never 
finally solved by science, for no sooner is one cause 
discovered than it gives rise to questions concern- 
ing the cause of this cause. Strange as it may 
seem, it is only with regard to supernatural phe- 
nomena that the causes are supposed to be fully 
known ! But, of course, this is due merely to the 
fact that no attempt is made to analyze such phe- 
nomena or causes. 

If only the opponents of evolution could learn 
anything from past attempts to confute science 
by theology or the Bible, they would be more cau- 
tious. Such attempts have promoted neither 
science nor religion, as the controversies over the 
shape of the earth, its position in the universe, and 
its age abundantly demonstrate; and the case is 
not different with regard to the origin and develop- 
ment of life upon the earth. Scientific investi- 



PREFACE TO NEW EDITION xi 

gators and productive scholars have long since 
accepted evolution in the broadest sense as an 
established fact. Science now deals with the evo- 
lution of the elements, of the stars and solar system, 
of the earth, of life upon the earth, of various types 
and species of plants and animals, of the body, 
mind, and society of man, of science, art, govern- 
ment, education, and religion. In the light of this 
great generalization all sciences, and especially 
those which have to do with living things, have 
made more progress in the last century than in all 
the previous centuries of human history. Even 
progressive theology has come to regard evolution 
as an ally rather than as an enemy. The defenders 
of religion can only do their cause harm by bring- 
ing against this great generalization of science 
sentimental objections or supposed theological dif- 
ficulties. The wiser course would seem to be to 
recognize the fact that scientific truth can be estab- 
lished only by scientific methods, and to attempt to 
readjust theological beliefs to advancing knowledge. 
If the human species, no less than all others, has 
come into existence by a process of evolution, what 
are the prospects for the future ? May we look for- 
ward to endless progress, or do present signs indi- 
cate that the human race has reached its climax? 
Toward what form of social organization is evolu- 
tion leading ? What are the tendencies in the field 
of ethics and religion? 



xii PREFACE TO NEW EDITION 

Certainly no more important questions than these 
confront the human race, and, although it is impos- 
sible to give a final answer to any one of them, it is 
possible in the light of present tendencies and past 
principles of evolution to see at least dimly and in 
ghostly outline the mighty shadows and shapes of 
the future. It is in this spirit only, and not with 
the vain imagining that any human being can pre- 
dict particular events which depend upon so many 
factors as are involved in the evolution of a race, 
that attention is invited in this book to the direc- 
tion of human evolution. 

E. G. C. 

May I, 1922. 



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

The lectures which constitute this volume were 
given at the University of North Carolina in May, 
1920, under the terms of the "John Calvin McNair 
Lectureship on the mutual bearings of science and 
religion upon each other." One or two of them 
were also delivered at Northwestern University, 
Mt. Holyoke College, Western University, and the 
University of Texas. 

The topic chosen for this series is one in which 
the bearings of science upon religion are most vital, 
namely, the origin and destiny of the human race. 
I shall attempt to present certain conclusions of 
science regarding the evolution of man, and shall 
venture to draw from these conclusions certain in- 
ferences with regard to the future of the human 
race, but I have no desire to force others to accept 
these conclusions or inferences. 

The spirit of science is freedom to seek and to 
find truth, freedom to hold and to teach any view 
for which there is rational evidence, recognition 
that natural knowledge is incomplete and subject 
to revision, and that there is no legitimate com- 
pulsion in science except the compulsion of evidence. 

The method of science is to proceed from observa- 



XIV PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

tions to tentative explanations which are then 
tested by further observations and experiments, 
thus reaching general explanations or theories. 
Scientific theories are not mere guesses but are 
based upon careful, detailed observations, but 
where time and space forbid entering into details, 
as is true in these lectures, only general conclusions 
can be given. On the other hand the philosophical 
and religious deductions which are based upon sci- 
entific theories must necessarily be still more ten- 
tative, and it is hoped that the reader will take this 
for granted even though it is not always expressly 
stated. 

The aim of real science, as well as of true religion, 
is to know the truth, confident that even unwel- 
come truth is better than cherished error, that the 
welfare of the human race depends upon the exten- 
sion and diffusion of knowledge among men, and 
that truth alone can make us free. 

It is not my intention to argue the truth of the 
general theory of organic evolution; the day for 
this is passed. Evolution in the widest sense is 
accepted by most men of science, and the evidences 
for it need not be recalled here. Nor do I propose 
to present in detail the evidences for the evolution 
of man; this has been done in many other places 
and need not be repeated here. My purpose is 
rather to consider the course of past evolution only 
in so far as it bears upon the present and to apply 



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xv 

the principles which have guided evolution in the 
past to the present and future evolution of the 
human race. In doing this I hope not only to deal 
with a phase of the subject which will be more 
immediately practical and profitable than a mere 
consideration of past evolution would be, but which 
also may avoid many controversies, for whatever 
our views may be as to the past evolution of man 
there is general belief in the present and future de- 
velopment and evolution of the human race. 

Finally, in considering the bearings of evolution 
upon government and religion, I realize that I am 
dealing with subjects which are generally regarded 
as quite outside the field of biology. However, I 
am convinced that nothing which concerns man is 
wholly foreign to the fundamental principles of 
life and evolution, and that the future progress of 
mankind depends upon a rational application of 
the principles of science to all human affairs. 
Everywhere intellectual classes are breaking away 
from old traditions; everywhere old faiths are be- 
ing critically examined; everywhere evidence is de- 
manded in place of authority, and the times call 
for a restatement of the reasons for the faith that 
is in us. 

The recent cataclysm which has swept over the 
world, the perils of civilization, the threatenings of 
revolution and Bolshevism and the wide-spread re- 
crudescence of emotionalism, irrationalism, and 



xvi PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

selfishness have caused all thoughtful people to look 
anxiously to the future. Many persons believe 
that our civilization, like other civilizations of the 
past, is showing signs of degeneration and decay, 
that throughout the world the less intelligent and 
more selfish elements of society are coming to con- 
trol government, industry, and education, while 
the best elements are dying out or are losing con- 
trol. Others look forward with alarm to increasing 
conflicts between the races of mankind, to a "Rising 
Tide of Color in the Struggle for World Suprem- 
acy,"* and to elimination of the finest types in 
"The Passing of the Great Race." f 

Chesterton says that the World War put a stop 
to aU our talk about human evolution, but this is 
certainly not true. Never before have the prob- 
lems of the future evolution of man, whether pro- 
gressive or retrogressive, been so insistent and ab- 
sorbing, and never before has it been so important 
for men to get a comprehensive and steady view of 
human evolution and of human destiny. 

Certain portions or abstracts of these lectures 
have been printed in Princeton University Lectures ^ 
Scribner's Magazine, the Yale Review, and the 
Methodist Church Congress Series. I am indebted 
to these publications for permission to rewrite and 
enlarge these portions for this volume. I wish also 

* Stoddard, Lothrop, New York, 1920. 
t Grant, Madison, New York, 1918. 



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xvii 

to express my obligations to Dr. J. H. McGregor 
of Columbia University for the photograph of his 
restorations of primitive men, which is reproduced in 
the frontispiece, and to some of my colleagues for 

friendly advice and criticism. 

E. G. C. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface to New Edition ......... v 

Preface to First Edition xiii 

I. PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN 
EVOLUTION 

I. Introduction 3 

A. The Law of Continuity 7 

B. The Principles of Evolution ... 9 

1. evolution is TRANS-rORMATION AND 

NOT NEW-FORMATION 9 

2. EVOLUTION IS TRANSFORMATION OF 

GERMPLASM AND NOT OF DEVELOPED 

BODIES OF ANIMALS OR PLANTS . . lO 

3. INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON EVO- 

LUTION II 

INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHAR- 
ACTERS . 13 

4. SOCIAL INHERITANCE 14 

C. The Results of Evolution .... 15 

1. diversity 15 

2. adaptation .;..,... l6 

3. progress ......... 16 

(a) the PATHS of progress .... 18 

(b) progress most rapid at first . 19 

II. The Past Evolution of Man 25 

III. Modern Races of Men ...... 31 

IV. The Peopling of the Earth . . . . .36 
V. Hybridization of Races 47 



XX CONTENTS 

PAGB 

VI. Present and Future Evolution of Man . 54 

A. Physical Evolution 54 

EUGENICS i . 56 

B. Intellectual Evolution 65 

C. Social Evolution 69 

D. Man's Conquest of Nature .... 77 

VII. Will there Be a Higher Animal than Man ? 79 



II. EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 
I. The Biological Foundations of Society 

A. Physical, Intellectual, Social Evolu 
tion not Antagonistic , . . 



B. Social Progress Means Greater Spe 
cialization and Co-operation 

C Society Founded on Instincts . 
II. Progress in Human History . . . 
III. The Biological Bases of Democracy 



85 

85 

88 
90 

95 

100 



IV. Personal Liberty vSi Social Organization 112 

V. Democratic Equality vs. Hereditary In- 
equality 127 

VI. Universal Fraternity vs. National and 

Class Antagonisms 134 

Conclusion 155 



III. EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

I. The Nature of Religion 161 

A. Cosmic Mysteries 162 



CONTENTS xxi 

MCE 

B. The Problem or Evil 163 

C. The Inner Conflict 165 

D. The Function of Religion .... 166 

II. The Evolution of Religion , . . . . 169 

ni. The Conflict between Theology and Sci- 
ence 178 

rv. Nature and the Supernatural .... 185 

A. Popular Misconceptions of Nature 

AND THE Supernatural .... 186 

B. Scientific Conception of Law , . . 193 

C. Supernaturalism in Religion . . . 197 

V. Evolution vs. Creation . . . . . .202 

VI. Evolution and the Biblical Account . . 206 

VII. Is Evolution Atheistic? 209 

VIII. Evolution and the Doctrine of Design . 218 

IX. The Nature of Man 230 

X. The Religion of Evolution 237 

A. Progress through Struggle .... 237 

B. Ethnocentric rather than Egocentric 240 

C. The Outcome of Evolution .... 245 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES OF 
HUMAN EVOLUTION 



INTRODUCTION 

Until about fifty years ago it was generally be- 
lieved, even by scientists, that man had been re- 
cently and miraculously created, and that he stood 
apart from the rest of nature in solitary grandeur. 
It was thought that the whole past history of man 
and even of the earth and stellar universe had been 
a very brief one, dating back only to about 4,000 
years B. C, or approximately 200 human genera- 
tions, and many persons confidently expected that 
the future would be even shorter. It is an inter- 
esting fact that until very recent times the insta- 
bility of nature and its approaching end were 
deeply impressed on most minds. Prophets looked 
forward to a speedy end of the world; poems were 
written on "The Last Man"; various sects pre- 
pared their ascension robes and waited for the 
comet to strike the earth or the eternal trumpet to 
sound; and even those who did not prepare often 
believed and trembled. 

What a revolution has occurred in our concep- 
tion of man and nature during the past few years ! 
Science has taught us something of the wonderful 
stability of nature, something of the continuity 
and eternity of natural processes, something of the 

3 



4 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

universality of natural law, something of the im- 
mensity of time and space. There is no longer 
any doubt among scientists that man is descended 
from animal ancestors. There is no longer any 
serious question among leading biologists and an- 
thropologists that not only the body, but also the 
mind and society of man are the products of evo- 
lution. For a time there was a tendency to admit 
the truth of evolution so far as man's body was 
concerned, but to deny it in respect to his mind 
and society. But this position was satisfactory 
to no one. Neither the evolutionist nor the special 
creationist could be satisfied with such a divided 
origin for man, and more recent work on the psy- 
chology and society of different races of men and 
of animals below man has shown the same sort of 
evidence for the evolution of human intellect and 
society as for the evolution of the body. Man, then, 
in his entirety is regarded by science as the product 
of evolution. His actual origin goes back not to 
Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, 6,000 
years ago, but to more primitive races of men, and 
then to prehuman ancestors, and in the end to 
the earliest forms of life upon the earth. Between 
us and these earliest forms there has been an un- 
broken line of descent, an uninterrupted stream 
of life through all the ages. 

And this enormously long past history leads us 
to beUeve that the future will be equally long. It 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 5 

has been customary to look upon evolution as a 
process which flourished mightily "in the dark 
backward and abysm of time" but which has prac- 
tically come to an end to-day. But evolution looks 
forward as well as backward. The eternal laws of 
nature will not cease to operate to-day or to-morrow. 
We are creatures of a day; our lives are mere points 
in the great curve of evolution; what changes the 
future may have in store for the human race no man 
can clearly foresee. And yet one who stands on 
the shore and sees the curve of the sky and sea can, 
in imagination, extend this arc until it circles the 
globe, and he feels the earth beneath him rolling 
through space. From a few observations an astron- 
omer can calculate the whole orbit of a comet and 
predict when it will return, perhaps hundreds or 
thousands of years hence. And so, although we 
catch but glimpses of great processes which come 
out of eternity and go into eternity, we can project 
the great principles of past evolution into the future 
and venture upon a scientific prophecy of "What 
mankind shall be." 

It was the peculiar ability of Darwin to see 
nature in four dimensions — length, breadth, depth, 
and duration. He observed the activities of earth- 
worms for a season, and then calculated the agri- 
cultural and geological importance of worms acting 
through many years. He observed the minor varia- 
tions of animals and plants, and then saw the evo- 



6 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

lutionary significance of such changes when ex- 
tended throughout geological time. He saw the 
great destruction of weak and ill-adapted plants 
and animals each year, and projecting this process 
backward through the ages found a natural ex- 
planation for the wonderful fitness of organisms. 

One who stands on the brink of the Grand Canon 
and reflects on the duration of time necessary for 
a stream of water to have cut this vast chasm in 
the solid rock, and then thinks of the still longer 
time during which these rocks were being laid down 
as sediments beneath the sea, has a measuring-rod 
which may be used in estimating the duration of 
the evolutionary process. One who views man, 
not as the creation of a few years ago, but as the 
product of vast series of prehistoric ages — such a 
one only can take the long view with regard to the 
human race, not only as to the past but also as 
to the future. 

There is increased breadth of view and accuracy 
of judgment and increased confidence and satis- 
faction in the long view of the human race as con- 
trasted with the short view. One who has in mind 
the whole course of evolution and of human his- 
tory will not be deceived into thinking that local 
eddies and back currents are the main stream. 
One who recalls what the human race has come up 
from will not yield to despair over the present 
crises of civilization. 'Even the selfishness, stu- 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 7 

pidity, and irrationality of men will not cause him 
to forget the advances of the past nor to lose faith 
in the future. The long view of human history 
is not only the sane and rational one, but it is also 
the hopeful view. 

It is often said that science deals only with the 
past and present and leaves the future to prophets 
and seers. This is true with regard to many de- 
tails the causes of which are numerous and com- 
plex. But on the other hand it is possible to pre- 
dict general tendencies and phenomena which will 
result from fundamental principles and causes. 
The details of the future evolution of man no one 
can predict, but the outcome of the general prin- 
ciples of evolution may be predicted, for we have 
confidence that these principles are constant and 
that they will continue to operate in the future as 
in the past. What are these principles? 

A. The Law of Continuity 

"Pour juger de ce qui est arrive, et meme de ce qui 
arrivera, nous n'avons qu'a examiner ce qui arrive" (Buf- 
fon, "Theorie de la Terre.") 

"To understand what has happened, and even 
what will happen, we have only to examine what is 
happening." This is what has been called the 
"Law of Continuity" — or more accurately the 
"Doctrine of Uniformity," namely, the belief that 
nature is uniform and her processes continuous, that 



8 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

the laws of cause and effect, of gravity, of conser- 
vation of matter and energy, of thermodynamics, 
chemical affinity, life and death, heredity, develop- 
ment, and evolution are the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever. The astronomer, physicist, and chem- 
ist believe that laws of gravity, light, electricity, 
and the combinations and dissociations of chemical 
elements are the same to-day as when the "morn- 
ing stars first sang together." The biologist be- 
lieves that the animals which lived and reproduced 
on the shores of the Paleozoic seas had protoplasm 
and cells, nuclei and chromosomes, and that their 
nutrition, reproduction, embryonic development, 
senescence, and death were essentially the same as 
in the animals we now study at our marine labora- 
tories; that the Mendelian laws of inheritance, varia- 
tion, and evolution applied to the earliest living 
things as well as to the latest. All science is based 
upon the fundamental belief that in natural laws 
** there is neither variableness nor shadow of turn- 
ing." Variableness in events (not in laws), and 
even what we call chance, are not capricious but 
are themselves governed by law; they are merely 
the results of new combinations of existing factors 
or causes. We have applied this principle of con- 
tinuity and uniformity to the past evolution of the 
universe, to the stars, solar system, and earth, to 
the evolution of animals and plants, and even of 
man; and in the light of what is happening now 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 9 

have been able to Judge what has happened in the 
past. And where the factors involved are not too 
numerous we can apply this principle to the future 
and determine what will happen in time to come; 
and, even where it is not possible to predict with 
certainty particular events because of the com- 
plexity of the factors involved, it is yet possible 
to determine future tendencies and Dossibilities. 

B. The Principles of Evolution 

I. Evolution Is Trans-formation and Not New- 
formation 

Evolution consists in new combinations of the 
elements of which organisms are composed and not 
in the formation de novo of such elements. Nowhere 
in nature, neither in the living nor in the lifeless 
world, is there such a thing as creation out of 
nothing. Every new thing is formed by new com- 
binations of things already present. In chemistry 
and physics these are the atoms or the electrons of 
which the atoms are composed; in biology they are 
the organs, cells, chromosomes, the hereditary char- 
acters, inheritance units, or the molecules of which 
such units are composed. Evolution does not con- 
sist in the creation de novo of molecules, units, char- 
acters, organs, or functions, but rather in new com- 
binations of these. 

At the same time it must be recognized that new 
combinations give rise to new quaUties. When 



lO PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

hydrogen and oxygen combine they produce some- 
thing which is different from either, and when differ- 
ent hereditary units combine they produce char- 
acters unhke those of the parents; even in the forma- 
tion of new hereditary units, or what are now called 
mutations, we have only new combinations of the 
elements of which such units are composed. This 
formation of new qualities as the result of new 
combinations of the same old elements may be 
called, following Bergson, "creative evolution," 
but it is important to remember that it does not 
differ essentially from the similar phenomenon in 
chemistry and physics which is known as "creative 
synthesis," and that it results merely from new com- 
binations, that it is transformation and not new- 
formation. 

2. Evolution Is Transformation of Germplasm and 
Not of Developed Bodies of Animals or Plants 

The only living bond between successive genera- 
tions is found in the germ cells, which extend back 
from us without a break to our earliest progenitors, 
and any evolutionary changes which are to trans- 
form races or species must take place in these 
germ cells. The body may undergo great changes 
as the result of environment, use or disuse, or other 
causes, but the body is mortal — it develops and 
dies in each generation — whereas the germ cells 
are, potentially at least, immortal. Consequently 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES ii 

changes in heredity are due to changes in the 
immortal germplasm rather than in mortal bodies; 
and evolution, which is based on changes in hered- 
ity, consists in the evolution of germplasm rather 
than of developed organisms. 

In spite of much controversy, due largely to lack 
of clear thinking, it is now practically certain that 
characters acquired by the mortal body are not 
inherited; that is, are not transmitted to the germ- 
plasm. Evolutionary changes are not first wrought 
in developed bodies but in germplasm. 

3. Influence of Environment on Evolution 

All theories as to the causes of evolution agree 
in ascribing more or less importance to the influ- 
ence of environment. Lamarckism maintains that 
changes in individuals are caused directly by 
changes in environment, and that these individual 
changes are inherited and thus bring about racial 
changes. Darwinism teaches that "variations of 
every sort are caused by changed conditions of 
life," but that those which are injurious are quickly 
eliminated while only those which are beneficial, 
that is, well adapted to environment, persist and 
constitute the building materials of evolution. 
The mutation theory of de Vries teaches that varia- 
tions are of two distinct kinds: first, fluctuations 
which are changes in the developed organism and 
are not inherited; and second, mutations which are 



12 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

changes in the germplasm and are inherited. 
Fluctuations are caused chiefly if not entirely by 
changes in environment, and while the causes of 
mutations are not known with certainty it seems 
most probable that they also are to be found 
in environmental influences — meaning by environ- 
ment everything which surrounds the inheritance 
units or genes of the germplasm. These mutations 
appear without reference to whether they are valu- 
able or injurious; as a matter of fact probably only 
one out of a thousand is beneficial, but those which 
are injurious are eliminated by the environment. 
Consequently the direction of evolution has to a 
certain extent been determined by the environ- 
mental conditions. 

In short, all modern theories of the causes of 
evolution maintain that heritable variations are 
probably caused by changes in environment, and 
all evolutionists to-day believe that whether these 
variations survive or are wiped out depends upon 
their relation to environment. Environment thus 
plays a very important part in evolution, and any 
hypothesis that wholly discards or disregards this 
factor can have no standing in science. 

But, on the other hand, this does not justify the 
opinion that environmental changes are the sole 
causes of evolution. Undoubtedly the organism 
that is acted upon is as important as the environ- 
ment which acts upon it. Evolution is one of the 



TATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 13 

responses of the germplasm to environmental stim- 
uli, and the character of the response is deter- 
mined in large part by the constitution of the germ- 
plasm rather than by the stimulus. Thus both the 
organism and its surroundings, its hereditary con- 
stitution and its environment, are concerned in 
evolution, as well as in development or any other 
vital activity. It is certain that the outer environ- 
ment may act directly upon germ cells, or indirectly 
through the inner environment of the body. But 
this does not mean that germ cells react to environ- 
ment in identically the same way that body cells 
do; indeed every kind of cell responds to environ- 
mental stimuli in its own peculiar way — muscle 
cells in one way, nerve cells in another, gland cells 
in still another, and it is probable that different 
kinds of germ cells, or even the same kinds at dif- 
ferent stages in their development, respond to the 
same environment in different ways. 

Inheritance of Acquired Characters. — But, assum- 
ing that the hereditary constitution of the germ 
cells may sometimes be changed by environmental 
influences, there is no argument in this for the "in- 
heritance of acquired characters." For both ver- 
bally and historically this expression means that 
changes in body cells produced by environmental 
influences are transmitted through the germ cells 
to the body cells of the next generation; and ana- 
lyzing this process further it would imply that par- 



14 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

tides or units of the germplasm must react to 
environmental changes in exactly the same way as 
organs or parts of the body do. In short, "in- 
heritance of acquired characters" implies that the 
germ is the body in miniature, and this is certainly 
not true. 

Furthermore, it is known as a matter of fact 
that acquired characters are not usually, if ever, 
inherited. Environment, training, education may 
greatly modify the glands, muscles, and nerves, 
but they do not change the germplasm so as to 
produce these identical modifications in the next 
generation. The hope of permanently improving 
the human race, or any other species, in this man- 
ner can only lead to disappointment and failure. 

4. Social Inheritance 

At the same time it must be remembered that 
man transmits to his descendants not only a par- 
ticular germplasm, consisting of hereditary units, 
which determine his bodily qualities and mental 
capacities, but he also hands down through lan- 
guage, education, and customs, and not through 
the germplasm, his own personal acquirements, 
experiences, and possessions. This may be called 
"Social Inheritance," though it is a totally different 
thing from "Biological or Germinal Inheritance." 
In this sense we have inherited from our parents 
language, property, customs, laws, institutions. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 15 

They are no part of our germplasm, nor even of our 
bone and sinew and brain, but rather of our envi- 
ronment. Because of this social inheritance society 
may advance from age to age, each succeeding gen- 
eration starting where the preceding one ended, as 
in a relay race — whereas in our germinal inheri- 
tance each generation begins where the previous 
one began, namely from an egg-cell, and the whole 
course of development must be repeated in each 
generation. 

C. The Results of Evolution 
In the course of evolution organisms have moved 
forward, backward, and sidewise, or rather they 
have spread as the branches of a tree, some of 
them merely diverging at the same level of organi- 
zation, others growing upward, and still others 
downward. The results of evolution may be sum- 
marized in three words: Diversity, Adaptation, 
Progress. 

I. Diversity 
Diversity is seen in the innumerable variations, 
mutations, and species of the living world. Most 
of these are no more complex or perfect than the 
stocks from which they have sprung, and some of 
them are degenerate descendants of more perfect 
ancestors. Diversity, in short, is mere change, 
whether progressive or retrogressive, whether use- 
ful, indifferent, or harmful. 



1 6 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

2. Adaptation 
Adaptive evolution is increasing perfection of ad- 
justment to conditions of life. The only scientific 
explanation of such adjustment or fitness is Dar- 
win's principle of natural selection of the fit and 
elimination of the unfit, and it is eloquent testimony 
to the greatness of Darwin that more and more this 
great principle is being recognized as the only 
mechanistic explanation of adaptation. Whether 
natural selection is a complete explanation of all 
adaptation may be doubted, but at least it is one 
of the most important causes of adaptive evolution. 

3. Progress 

Progressive evolution is the advance in organiza- 
tion from the simplest to the most complex or- 
ganisms, from amoeba to man. Biological progress 
means increasing complexity of structures and func- 
tions, increasing specialization and co-operation of 
the parts and activities of organisms, and human 
progress, whether physical, intellectual, or social, 
means no more and no less than this. 

It is often assumed that there are no necessary 
limits to progress in any line, and that the past 
course of evolution shows that man came from 
primordial protoplasm and will go on to endless 
growth and glory. But as a matter of fact the past 
course of evolution teaches that the limits of prog- 
ress are fixed by its very nature. No single animal 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 17 

or plant, however complex it may be, can combine 
within itself all the complexities of all organisms. 
Increasing specialization means increasing limita- 
tions in certain directions in order to advance in 
others. If a creature have wings it cannot also 
have hands (except in art where angels are given 
an extra pair of appendages and hair and feathers 
are mixed regardless of zoological classification); if 
its limbs are differentiated for running they cannot 
also be speciahzed for swimming; if it have enor- 
mous strength it cannot also have great delicacy 
of movement. Thus while certain animals are 
specialized in one direction, and others in another, 
no animal can be differentiated in all directions. 

Furthermore, increasing specialization leads to 
lack of adaptability; peculiar fitness for any special 
condition of life means unfitness for other and differ- 
ent conditions. When differentiations in any one 
direction go so far that they unfit the organism for 
any condition of life except a single and special 
one, the chances for survival are greatly reduced, 
and sooner or later this highly differentiated or- 
ganism becomes extinct or returns to a more gen- 
eralized type. 

Paleontology is, in the main, the science of or- 
ganisms that were too highly differentiated to ad- 
just themselves to the new conditions that came 
upon them and which therefore became extinct. 
The death of species, Hke the death of individuals. 



i8 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

is the price that is paid for differentiation. One- 
celled organisms and all germ cells are potentially 
immortal, but the highly differentiated bodies of 
animals and plants and their highly differentiated 
muscle, nerve, and tissue cells are mortal, probably 
because they are too highly specialized to adjust 
themselves to all the changing conditions of exist- 
ence. 

Similarly species that are not highly specialized 
are highly adaptable, and have great powers of 
survival, while those that are highly specialized 
have little adaptability, and consequently are more 
likely to become extinct. For this reason new 
paths of evolution usually start from generalized 
rather than from highly specialized types. 

(a). The Paths of Progress. — Millions of diver- 
sities exist among organisms, and they are appear- 
ing continually; thousands of adaptations have 
arisen during the course of evolution and are still 
arising; but different lines of progress have been 
relatively few. The most important paths of prog- 
ress throughout all the past ages have been in the 
direction of 

(i) Increasing bodily complexity, or the multipli- 
cation and differentiation of cells, tissues, organs, 
and systems; 

(2) Increasing intelligence, or the capacity of 
profiting by experience, which comes with increas- 
ing organization of the nervous system; 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 19 

(3) Increasing social organization, or the dififer- 
entiation and integrations of individuals or persons, 
whether among ants, bees, or men. 

(b). Progress Most Rapid at First. — In all these 
paths of evolution progress is most rapid at first, 
and it then slows down until it stops. It may be 
compared to a curve which rises rapidly at first, 
and then approaches more and more to a straight 
line. Or better still, it may be compared to a 
flow of lava which rushes forward while it is at 
white heat and fresh out of the crater, but goes 
more and more slowly as it cools until it stops al- 
together; if the central stream remains fluid (or 
the organism remains labile and relatively undiffer- 
entiated) it may burst out and again flow rapidly 
in one direction or another until it again cools and 
stops. 

The rate of evolution has not been uniform 
throughout the past. Apparently there have been 
periodic advances or waves of evolution. De Vries 
thinks that there have been periods of mutation 
alternating with periods of stability in the history 
of species. Paleontologists have generally attrib- 
uted these evolutionary waves to changes in envi- 
ronment, and they call attention to the evidence 
that the periods of most rapid human evolution 
coincided with the great climatic changes during 
the four successive glacial epochs and the inter- 
glacial periods. 



20 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

(i) Bodily Complexity. — Probably the furthest 
possible limits of progressive evolution have already 
been reached in all well-tried lines of progress. 
Further progress must be made in new lines if at 
all, and from generalized rather than from highly 
specialized types. 

One-celled organisms reached their utmost limits 
of complexity millions of years ago; since then they 
have shown many diversities, many adaptations, 
but little if any progress. 

Also many-celled animals and plants long ago 
reached the limits of their possible progress in 
almost every line. Multiplication of cells, tissues, 
organs, systems, metameres, and zooids enormously 
increased the possibilities of specialization within 
each of these larger units of organization, but for 
millions of years there has been little further prog- 
ress in this direction of multiplicity and com- 
plexity. Only about fourteen times in the whole 
history of life upon the earth have new animal 
phyla appeared, and many of these were mere 
blind alleys which led nowhere, not even to 
many species; there have been no new phyla since 
fishes appeared in the Silurian age, no new classes 
since mammals appeared in the Triassic and birds 
in the Jurassic. Each of these classes of Verte- 
brates reached its maximum of complexity in the 
ages immediately following its first appearance, 
and thereafter it maintained only this level or more 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 2i 

frequently underwent a decline. The amphibians 
which first appeared in the Carboniferous reached 
their greatest complexity in the Permian. The 
reptiles which first appeared in the Permian reached 
their climax in the Mesozoic. The mammals which 
appeared in the Triassic reached their greatest de- 
velopment in the Quaternary. 

What is true of great classes of organisms such 
as those named is equally true of families, genera, 
and species. One need only recall the paleon- 
tological history of dinosaurs, elephants, camels, 
etc., to realize that, measured by geological time, 
organisms rather quickly reach the limits of their 
progress in any particular line. Diversities may 
continue to appear in all these types. Many new 
species have evolved and are still appearing, there 
have been diversifications and adaptation almost 
without limit, but progress in the sense of increas- 
ing complexity of organization has practically come 
to an end. 

(2) Animal Societies. — There are many grades 
of individuality in the living world from the visible 
and even the invisible parts of cells to whole cells, 
cell aggregates, tissues, organs, systems, persons, 
compound animals, and finally colonies and states. 
There are many grades of organization from the 
bacterium to the vertebrate, from the germ cell to 
the man. Animal societies are the highest grade 
of organization which has yet appeared on earth. 



22 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

In such societies the specialization and co-operation 
of persons make possible a higher degree of organ- 
ization than has ever appeared before. 

The evolution of animal societies may be traced 
from a condition in which every individual is much 
like every other one, and the bond of connection 
between them is very slight, up to societies of ants, 
bees, and termites, in which the specialization and 
co-operation of individuals is extraordinarily de- 
veloped. 

Already differentiation among ants and termites 
has gone so far that in the most complex colonies 
the three principal functions of life, namely nutri- 
tion, reproduction, and defense, are no longer found 
in the same individuals; "workers" are unable to 
reproduce or to defend the colony, males and fe- 
males are unable to get food or to defend themselves, 
"soldiers" are unable to reproduce or even to feed 
themselves. At the same time co-operation within 
the colony is practically perfect. It is difficult to 
imagine how differentiation and integration can 
go farther than this, and unless it does go farther 
progress in this direction has come to an end. 

(3) Intellectual evolution is the last, and, from 
the human point of view, the most important path 
of progress which has ever been discovered by or- 
ganisms. In lower animals intellect is either lack- 
ing or is but little developed, and behavior is guided 
entirely by rigid instincts; in higher animals it is 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 23 

more fully developed, but instinct is still the rule 
of life; in man only has intellect become to a cer- 
tain extent the master of instinct, so that he can- 
not only regulate his conduct in the light of experi- 
ence but can to a certain extent forecast the future 
and prepare for it. 

Here, as in the case of physical and social evolu- 
tion, the factors or elements out of which the new 
product, intellect, is built are present in the lowest 
and simplest forms of life, but it is only by the in- 
creasing differentiation and integration of these 
elements that progress is achieved. The elements 
out of which the psychic faculties of man have been 
developed are present in all organisms, even in 
germ cells, in the form of sensitivity, tropisms, re- 
flexes, organic memory, "trial and error," and a 
few other properties; in more complex animals 
these take the form of special senses, instincts, 
emotions, associative memory; in the highest ani- 
mals, and especially in man, they blossom forth 
as intelligence, reason, will, and consciousness. 
Many stages of this development may be seen in 
various animals below man, and also in the devel- 
opment of the human personality from the germ 
cells.* 

There is no evidence that intellectual progress, 
as distinguished from mere diversity, is still going 
on among animals, and that they will ultimately 

*See Conklin, "Heredity and Environment,'' 1920, pp. 32-56. 



24 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

graduate into man's class. For thousands of years 
man has endeavored to improve by selective breed- 
ing the intelligence of certain animals, especially 
of dogs and horses; undoubtedly much improve- 
ment has been made, but in intelligence, as in other 
qualities, a limit to improvement is sooner or later 
reached beyond which it is not possible to go. 

In bodily complexity, social organization, and 
intellectual capacity progressive evolution has vir- 
tually come to an end among organisms below man; 
further progress, if it occurs, must be in new paths 
and from generalized rather than from highly spe- 
cialized types. Has progressive evolution come to 
an end in the case of man also? 



II 

THE PAST EVOLUTION OF MAN 

Solar years, individual lives, and human genera- 
tions are too brief to be used as an adequate measur- 
ing-rod for the enormously long process of human 
evolution. We generally count time from the 
birth of Christ, and to us this seems a remote event. 
But the birth of Christ is no more than midway 
between our times and the earliest civilization in 
Europe,* while the civilizations of Egypt and Meso- 
potamia go back to a period at least 3,000 years 
B. C. At this remote time there were in the val- 
leys of the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris great cities 
and states, highly organized forms of society, and 
a culture represented by some of the greatest monu- 
ments of human history, highly developed agricul- 
ture and industries, the use of metals and the re- 
cording of laws, customs, wars, and even of scien- 
tific observations in writings. Even one thousand 
years earlier, at the date fixed upon by Archbishop 
Usher for the creation of the world and of man, viz., 
4000 B.C., there were in these valleys great popula- 
tions that had domesticated horses, donkeys, cattle, 
sheep, goats, ducks, and geese; that were cultivating 
barley, millet, wheat, and flax; that had through 

* Crete. 

25 



26 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

long periods of time developed various improved 
breeds and races of these animals and plants from 
their originally wild stocks. They had begun the 
smelting of ores and the use of copper implements; 
there were skilled craftsmen in various industries; 
they had a complicated system of writing and had 
developed a calendar of twelve months of thirty 
days each, with five feast days at the end of the 
year, thus showing a remarkable knowledge of as- 
tronomical time. Adam and Eve may well have 
been civilized human beings, for, according to the 
Usher chronology, they came only in the fulness of 
time and of human populations, and after the be- 
ginnings of civilization. 

But back of this civilization lay long years of 
barbarism and savagery, known as the neolithic 
and the paleolithic ages. The records of the former 
are found in various parts of the world in caves, 
cliffs, and lake-dweUings, in skeletons from ceme- 
teries, caves, and sedimentary deposits of lakes and 
rivers, accompanied by bricks and pottery, beautiful 
stone implements, ornaments of various kinds, and 
carvings and paintings on waUs and cliffs. While 
it is difficult to date this neolithic age, the best evi- 
dence indicates that around the Mediterranean it 
goes back to near the end of the last glacial epoch, 
say approximately 10,000 years ago. 

Back of this neolithic age lie the paleolithic ages 
of savagery, the records of which are for the most 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 27 

part stone implements and weapons; the latest of 
these are of beautiful workmanship, while the 
earliest are so crude that it is often difficult to de- 
cide whether or not they are the work of man. 
Along with these artifacts, skeletal remains have 
been found which indicate that the men of the later 
paleolithic ages were of the same species and had 
the chief physical characteristics of the present 
human species. Homo sapiens, and the stratigraph- 
ical evidences indicate that in Europe the existing 
species of man goes back at least 20,000 to 30,000 
years.* 

In the still more remote past occur skeletal re- 
mains of other and more primitive species of man. 
Most of these are represented by one or at most a 
few specimens, but one of the extinct species of 
man. Homo neanderthalensis, is represented by at 
least six skulls as well as other remains found in 
various parts of western Europe from Gibraltar 
to Germany. This Neanderthal type was dis- 
tinctly more ape-like than the present species: he 
had a low, retreating forehead, heavy supraorbital 
ridges, protruding jaws and face, and retreating 
chin. Rude flint implements associated with these 
remains indicate that the Neanderthal man was 
able at least to chip flint so as to produce weapons 
and implements with sharp cutting edges. These 

* On this subject see especially Henry Fairfield Osborn's " Men of 
the Old Stone Age," New York, 1916. 



28 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

remains are associated with the skeletons of other 
mammals, many of them now extinct, which charac- 
terize the later Pleistocene of Europe, and the pre- 
vailing opinion among geologists is that they be- 
long to the period of the third or fourth glacial 
epoch. It is obviously impossible to translate these 
geological epochs into years with any degree of 
certainty, but at a venture it may be said that the 
Neanderthal race lived somewhere between 25,000 
and 100,000 years ago. We do not know whether 
the Neanderthal species evolved into modern man, 
or whether he amalgamated with other types, or 
whether he was exterminated by the existing species, 
but in western Europe he appeared before the pres- 
ent species and was finally completely replaced by 
it. 

Other types of man of a still more ape-like form 
are represented by a few skeletal remains in earlier 
geological formations. One of the most important 
of these fossils is the famous Heidelberg jaw, found 
in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany. It is unlike 
any other human jaw in its unusual massiveness 
and lack of a chin, and yet the teeth are distinctly 
human in shape. There can be no reasonable 
doubt that it represents a species of man still more 
primitive and ape-like than the Neanderthal type, 
and accordingly this species has been named Homo 
heidelbergensis. This jaw was found at a depth of 
seventy-nine feet below the surface, associated with 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 29 

remains of many extinct mammals qf the first or 
second interglacial period, and it therefore carries 
the human record back to the middle or early 
Pleistocene, possibly 250,000 years ago. 

Finally the earliest type of man-like creature so 
far discovered is the erect ape-man. Pithecanthropus 
erectus, discovered by Dubois at Trinil, Java, in 
1892. These remains consist of a skull cap, a tooth, 
and a thigh-bone, and it is evident that they belong 
to a type intermediate between man and the higher 
apes — that they are, in short, one of the long- 
sought "missing links." The geological formation 
in which these fossils were found includes many 
extinct mammals of the late Pliocene or pre-glacial 
period, possibly 500,000 years ago. 

It is by no means certain that Pithecanthropus 
and the Heidelberg and Neanderthal races stand 
in the direct line of descent of modern man; for all 
we know to the contrary they may be collateral 
branches from the main human stem. But they 
do represent the most primitive types of man so 
far discovered. 

Even at this early stage, half a million years 
ago, the human line was already distinct from 
those of the higher apes, although these lines were 
then much closer together than at present, and the 
actual period at which they come together is as- 
sumed by Osborn to have been in the Oligocene 
age, perhaps a million years earlier. If this opinion 



30 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

is correct the line of man's descent has 'been dis- 
tinct ffrom that of his nearest living relatives, the 
anthropoid apes, for an immensely long period of 
time, perhaps one or two million years. The entire 
Christian Era represents not more than i-5oth part 
of the time since the Neanderthal man flourished, 
not more than 1-2 50th of the time since Pithecan- 
thropus, and probably not more than i- 500th part 
of the time since the human line split off from that 
of the apes. The human race is very old as mea- 
sured by our years and generations, and back of the 
first appearance of human types lie unnumbered 
millions of years during which evolution was mov- 
ing on from the lowest forms of life to the highest 
— from amoeba to man. 



Ill 

MODERN RACES OF MAN 

When for a few centuries one group of human 
beings became isolated from others there devel- 
oped, as happens now with most animals and 
plants, local varieties, mutants, and races, which 
were probably peculiarly adapted to the local con- 
ditions, owing to the struggle for existence and the 
survival of the fit. Thus, for example, if the color 
of primitive man was reddish or brownish, white or 
yellow or black men may have arisen in different 
regions, and at different times as mutants, or heredi- 
tary varieties. These mutations would have per- 
sisted if not positively injurious, and they would 
have gradually replaced individuals of other colors 
if they had been better adapted to local conditions. 
Once a few mutant races were established, diversi- 
fications of mankind proceeded not only by muta- 
tion and natural selection but also by the process 
of cross-breeding, and the very numerous subraces, 
types, and breeds of mankind owe their origin in 
considerable part to such mixtures of mutant races. 

The principles of Mendelian inheritance show 

that for every pair of contrasting characters in the 

two parents, as for example straight or curly hair, 

31 



32 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

brown or blue eyes, there are two types of grand- 
children showing these characters; when there are 
five such pairs of contrasting characters in the 
parents there may be (2)^ or 32 types of grand- 
children showing various combinations of these five 
characters; when there are ten pairs of contrasting 
characters there may be (2)^'' or 1,024 types of 
grandchildren. Between different races there are 
many more than ten unit differences, and thus with 
a relatively small number of mutant characters an 
enormous number of different combinations of the 
characters is possible in the offspring. Subsequent 
inbreeding of such a mixed race leads to the separa- 
tion or segregation of particular types, having cer- 
tain of these combinations, from other types having 
other combinations. In this way, practically all of 
our domestic animals and cultivated plants have 
been produced, and probably many, if not all, exist- 
ing branches of the human species owe their origin, 
not only to mutations, but also to the mingling of 
successive waves of migration and the amalgamation 
of different mutant types, which had arisen and 
multiplied in isolated regions. Since the early 
radiations from the birthplace of the species there 
have been many currents of migration running in 
many directions which have led to a more or less 
intimate commingling of different types, and where 
such commingling was later followed by isolation, 
races or subraces were formed. In this manner. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 33 

probably all the numerous existing branches of the 
human species were established. 

Three primary races of mankind are generally 
recognized in the world to-day, namely the white, 
yellow, and black races — the brown and red races 
being generally regarded as offshoots of one or 
more of these primary races. In addition to these 
primary races there are many subraces and breeds, 
most if not all of them being of hybrid origin. In- 
deed there are few if any types of mankind to-day 
that are not hybrids between races, subraces, or 
breeds. Among these subraces are the light and 
the dark whites, and several types of browns, reds, 
yellows, and blacks. In each of these groups there 
are innumerable varieties that run into one another 
by insensible degrees, as would be expected in the 
case of hybrids. 

The question has often been raised whether the 
primary races of mankind do not represent distinct 
species. It is difficult, if not impossible, to define 
the term "species" in a manner which will be uni- 
versally acceptable, but in general biologists agree 
that in the animal and plant world true species 
differ in more respects and to a greater degree than 
do the primary races of mankind. Furthermore, 
true species do not generally produce fertile hybrids 
when interbred, though there are many exceptions 
to this rule, whereas all races of mankind produce 
fertile hybrids when crossed. Therefore systema- 



34 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

tists generally agree that there is at present but one 
species of man, namely Homo sapiens, and that all 
races and varieties have arisen in the first instance 
from a common human stock. 

Again the question is often asked : Which of these 
races of mankind represents most nearly the orig- 
inal ancestral stock, and which has departed farthest 
from that stock. Comparison of any modern race 
with the Neanderthal or Heidelberg t3^es shows 
that all have changed, but probably the negroid 
races more closely resemble the original stock than 
the white or yellow races. The separation of these 
primary races occurred long before the historic era. 
In the period of the cave men of Europe, possibly 
25,000 years ago, remains of two races have been 
found, the Cro-Magnons, resembling more closely 
the white or brown races of the present, and the 
Grimaldi race with negroid characteristics. We do 
not know when the white and yellow races first 
became distinct, but this also was probably at a 
very remote period. 

The subraces and minor subdivisions of the hu- 
man species have arisen much more recently, some 
of them within the historic era, and many, if not 
most of them, as the results of migration and hy- 
bridization. Three branches of the white race in 
Europe are generally recognized, namely the tall, 
blond, Nordic race of northern Europe; the stocky, 
dark, Alpine race, probably of Asiatic origin; and 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 35 

the small, dark, Mediterranean race surrounding 
the sea of that name, and probably extending east- 
ward to India.* 

The subdivisions of the other primary races as 
well as the many hybrid types found in various 
parts of the world cannot be considered here. But 
emphasis must be placed upon the fact that the 
evolution of these subraces was not due entirely 
to divergent mutations of an originally common 
stock, but also to recombination and hybridization 
of groups already present, which probably arose in 
the first instance as a result of mutation and diver- 
gent evolution. 

Furthermore it is probable that many charac- 
teristics which have hitherto been regarded as 
hereditary or racial may be due to environmental 
causes; it is probable, for example, that stature, 
long-headedness (dolicocephaly) or round-headed- 
ness (brachycephaly), etc., may sometimes be caused 
by higher or lower activity of the thyroid gland 
and that this may be influenced by food, particu- 
larly by the iodine intake. 

*For a full discussion of these races see Madison Grant's "The 
Passing of the Great Race," New York, 1918. 



IV 

THE PEOPLING OF THE EARTH 

Man has always been a wandering animal; he 
is the most wide-ranging of all mammals. From 
his earliest home, probably in the table-lands of 
central Asia, successive waves of human migration 
have flowed forth in all directions. The records 
of these earliest wanderings are lost in the haze of 
immense antiquity but we have reason to believe 
that for at least a thousand centuries primitive 
man wandered over vast regions of Asia, Europe, ■ 
and Africa. Long before the beginnings of recorded 
history men had found and occupied every habita- 
ble land on the globe with the possible exception 
of a few distant oceanic islands. Everywhere the 
"aborigines," who were found by white men in 
their earliest explorations, were not the first inhabi- 
tants, but were invaders who had driven out still 
earlier peoples. When the Maoris first came to 
New Zealand, they found an earlier race there, the 
Morioris, whom they exterminated or drove out 
to more inhospitable lands such as the Chatham 
Islands; when the Australian "aborigines" first 

came to that land they found it already occupied 

36 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 37 

by another race who retreated before them to 
Tasmania;* the Polynesian race was preceded in 
its occupancy of the Pacific Islands by an unknown 
race which left great monolithic monuments, as in 
Fiji and in Easter Island; the American Indians 
were preceded by the "Mound Builders"; and 
similarly in every part of the world it is difficult 
to get back to the first human inhabitants. In 
the thousands of centuries which separate the origin 
of the earliest human types from the period of 
written history, mankind had wandered over all 
parts of the earth. 

During this time the surface of the earth itself 
suffered many changes; portions which are now 
covered by seas were then dry lands; isolated 
islands were then connected with continents; four 
great ice ages separated by interglacial epochs, 
each lasting for thousands of years, came and went; 
large portions of the northern hemisphere were 
at times as inhospitable as central Greenland is 
to-day and again these regions were covered with 
forests and luxuriant vegetation and inhabited 
by strange, extinct animals; and throughout all 
these changes in the earth's surface and in its 
living inhabitants, primitive men discovered and 
occupied practically every habitable portion of the 
globe. 

The total human population of the earth has 

*Spencer, W. Baldwin. "Federal Handbook on Australia," 1914. 



38 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

been estimated* to be about 1,700,000,000, distrib- 
uted among the different races as follows: 

White race about 550,000,000 

Yellow race about 500,000,000 

Brown race about 450,000,000 

Black race about 150,000,000 

Red race about 40,000,000 

It should be noted that it is customary to count 
persons of mixed white and colored blood as be- 
longing wholly to the colored races, so that the 
figures given above rather minimize the white 
element in the population of the globe. 

In general the growth of population is correlated 
with the area occupied and with the agricultural 
and industrial development of the people. Where 
there is much crowding, populations are either 
stationary or are growing slowly. Where there is 
a rich and abundant area, the growth of popula- 
tion is usually rapid. Tribes with antisocial or 
nomadic instincts, such as American Indians, 
Bedouins, and Gypsies are decreasing under the 
pressure of population and are destined ultimately 
to disappear, unless they adopt the habits of more 
settled peoples. 

In China the population is practically at a stand- 
still. It is growing in Japan and overflowing into 
other countries, but on the whole the yellow race 

* Stoddard, Lothrop. "The Rising Tide of Color Against White 
World Supremacy," New York, 1920, p. 6. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 39 

is not increasing very rapidly in numbers. Fecun- 
dity is high but so, also, is mortaHty. In spite of 
the great area which it occupies the black race is 
not increasing in numbers in Africa, whereas by 
immigration and natural increase the white race 
in that continent is growing rapidly. Even in the 
United Stated the rate of increase of the blacks 
is not equal to that of the whites, for although the 
birth-rate is high, the death-rate is also high. 

The white race with about one-third of the total 
population of the globe occupies four-tenths of the 
habitable land and has political control over nine- 
tenths of it.* In the more densely populated 
portions of Europe the population is approaching 
a stationary condition, but in the wide areas of 
America, Africa, and Australasia it is expanding 
rapidly. 

In spite of the occasional alarms which are 
sounded with regard to "race-suicide" it is evident 
that the white race is at present increasing more 
rapidly than any of the other human races. This 
is due not merely to the larger area which it con- 
trols, but also to its greater agricultural, industrial, 
and scientific development. While the birth-rate 
is. falHng everywhere, the death-rate is falHng more 
rapidly among whites than among other races. 

How long this greater growth of the white race 
may go on no one can foresee, but certainly we 

* Stoddard, L., loc. eit. 



40 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

may anticipate that it will continue until the rela- 
tively unoccupied areas which it now controls are 
much more densely populated. But in an indus- 
trial age it is not so much land area as sources of 
energy such as coal, oil, and water power that 
count most. Where these are abundant, there 
are the "seats of power." Some of these have 
been rapidly exhausted in the white man's countries 
and it is believed that great stores of them are 
found in other lands, especially in China. This 
undoubtedly betokens a great industrial develop- 
ment in China in the near future and this in turn 
will lead to a further increase of population in 
that country. 

Most of our "race problems" are of relatively 
recent origin and are caused chiefly by the pressure 
of population within certain centres and its over- 
flow into other lands as well as by the importation 
of cheap labor. The white man in particular has 
forced himself on other races, and the pressure of 
whites into the lands of colored races has gone 
much farther than the reverse. Furthermore, the 
white man's demand for cheap labor is chiefly re- 
sponsible for the importation of colored races into 
the lands of the whites and for the general mixing 
up of all races of mankind. The present competi- 
tion between races is a contest in the relative growth 
of populations and in economic progress rather than 
in military power. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 41 

In all living things populations tend to increase 
in geometrical ratio, while the limits of the habita- 
ble globe remain fixed. Migration may for a time 
reheve this pressure of overpopulation, but its 
limits are soon reached. In the case of man the 
control and utilization of natural resources has 
greatly extended the possible limits of population, 
but it is evident that these resources are not indefi- 
nite in extent. The whole world must look for- 
ward to a time, at no distant date, when the limits 
of population will be reached everywhere. 

In his "Principles of Economics" (8th edition, 
page 180) Alfred Marshall says: 

Taking the present population of the world at one and a 
half thousand millions; and assuming that its present rate 
of increase will continue (about 8 per 1,000 annually; see 
Ravenstein's paper before the British Association in 1890), 
we find that in less than 200 years it will amount to six thou- 
sand millions, or at the rate of about 200 to the square mile 
of fairly fertile land. (Ravenstein reckons 28 million square 
miles of fairly fertile land, and 14 millions of poor grass- 
lands. The first estimate is thought by many to be too high; 
but allowing for this, if the less fertile land be reckoned in 
for what it is worth, the result will be about 30 million square 
miles as assumed above.) Meanwhile there will probably 
be great improvements in the arts of agriculture; and, if 
so, the pressure of population on the means of subsistence 
may be held in check for about 200 years, but not longer. 

Pearl* has shown that the growth of popula- 
tion in the United States may be represented very 

* Pearl, R. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, June, 1920. 



42 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

accurately by a long /-shaped curve, in which our 
present population of about loo millions falls near 
the middle point, and he predicts that "the maxi- 
mum population which continental United States, 
as now arealy limited, will ever have will be roughly 
twice the present population." He estimates that 
this maximum will be reached in about i8o years, 
and that at that date "unless our food habits 
radically change, or unless our agricultural pro- 
duction radically increases, it will be necessary 
to import nearly or quite one-half of the calories 
necessary for that population." 

This is a different story from that which we have 
been accustomed to hear. No longer is it true that 
"Uncle Sam has land enough to give us all a farm," 
and the time is not very far off — only about six 
human generations — ^when the death-rate in this 
country must equal the birth-rate, or our descen- 
dants of that date must emigrate. And where will 
they go? By that time other parts of the world 
will be much more fully occupied, and other na- 
tions may choose to be more careful for their future 
than we have been for ours. And we thought we 
had room enough for aU the crowded peoples of the 
earth for all time to come ! This country will then 
have no immigration problem, but for hundreds of 
years more our descendants will have the racial 
problems bequeathed to them by us, in order that 
we might "get rich quick" by importing cheap 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 43 

foreign labor and by stripping our land of its natural 
resources as rapidly as possible. 

The dangers of overpopulation have been em- 
phasized by many scientists since Malthus pub- 
lished his famous essay on this subject. In general, 
these warnings have been lightly regarded, owing 
chiefly to the enormous advances of science in 
making available natural resources. Many per- 
sons seem to think that these advances will go on 
indefinitely and that therefore populations can 
increase indefinitely, but this is certainly not true ! 
"The population question," says Huxley, "is the 
real riddle of the Sphinx, to which no political 
(Edipus has as yet found the answer. In view of 
the ravages of the terrible monster, overmultipli- 
cation, all other riddles sink into insignificance." * 

Nature will, of course, solve this problem for 
us if we do not solve it for ourselves. Apart 
from migration there are two ways, and only two, 
of preventing overpopulation — by increasing the 
death-rate or decreasing the birth-rate. In all 
civiHzed countries the death-rate has been decreas- 
ing during the past century, but if overcrowding 
and underfeeding should occur the death-rate 
will inevitably increase. In the older and more 
populous portions of the world the birth-rate has 
also been decreasing, especially during the past 

* Huxley, T. H. "The Natural Inequalities of Men," Collected 
Essays, New York, p. 328. 



44 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

two or three generations. In the main this has 
been due to voluntary causes, and in so far as it 
represents an intelHgent and ethical control of 
reproduction, and not mere selfishness, it is to be 
commended. Future ages may see a complete 
reversal of the current legal aspects of birth- 
control; in a densely populated globe, instead of 
discouraging this and forbidding the diffusion of 
knowledge regarding it, the privilege of having 
children may be strictly limited. Hitherto evolu- 
tionary progress has depended to a large extent 
upon overpopulation, the struggle for existence 
and the survival of the fittest. In rational and 
moral human societies this kind of natural selec- 
tion can never again be allowed to work as it has 
done in the past, but possibly overpopulation may 
bring about a rational solution of this problem 
along the lines of eugenics and birth-control. 

Stoddard has said that the great danger to the 
white race in this struggle for supremacy is due to 
the fact that the colored races can underlive the 
whites. But there is no evidence that the abso- 
lute requirements of food and clothing differ in 
different races. The basal metabolism as measured 
in calories of food is not markedly greater for white 
men than for yellow or black men living under 
the same conditions. No doubt the standards of 
living are at present much higher among white 
than among colored races. But standards of liv- 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 45 

ing depend chiefly upon intelligence and resources. 
Within any and every race there are great individual 
variations in the standards of living, and among 
the intelligent and well-to-do of different races 
these standards do not differ greatly. There are 
few things which all types of mankind learn more 
quickly and willingly than to adopt higher stand- 
ards of living when they have the opportunity, 
and we may be sure that this will apply to the 
colored races as well as to the poorer types of whites. 
One of the great dangers which confronts the 
whole world is that standards of living, with de- 
mands for luxuries and leisure, are increasing much 
more rapidly than intelligence and social responsi- 
bihty. 

In the long run, supremacy will pass in every 
community, nation, or race to the more intelligent, 
the more capable, the more ethical, rather than to 
the best livers. It is only when high standards 
of living spring from high standards of intelligence 
and social ideals that they are not a menace rather 
than a blessing. Mere love of luxury will sap our 
civilization as it did that of ancient Greece and 
Rome, and if it should affect the white race much 
more than the colored races, then indeed should 
we have cause to fear for white leadership in the 
world. 

After all, in this struggle of races and peoples, 
there is reason to beheve that success will ulti- 



46 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

mately rest with the intelligent, the capable, and 
the ethical, and the attention of all who love their 
race should be centred upon raising the standards 
of heredity, of education, .and of social ideals rather 
than upon standards of living. I see no reason to 
suppose that in these respects the white races wiU 
fall below the colored ones. The greatest danger 
which faces any superior race is that of amalgama- 
tion with inferior stock and the consequent lowering 
of inherited capacities. 



V 

HYBRIDIZATION OF RACES 

Existing races have arisen by mutarion and 
hybridization, but they have been established by 
the isolation of certain of these mutants or biotypes. 
The present tendency to the breaking down of 
isolation and the commingling of races is a reversal 
of the processes by which those races were estab- 
lished. If in the past "God made of one blood 
all nations of men," it is certain that at present 
there is being made from all nations one blood. 
By the interbreeding of various races and breeds 
there has come to be a complicated intermixture 
of racial characters in almost every human stock, 
and this process is going on to-day more rapidly 
and extensively than ever before. Strictly speak- 
ing, there are no "pure" lines in any human group. 
If so-called "pure" English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, 
German, Russian, French, Spanish, or Italian 
lines are traced back only a few generations they 
are found to include many foreign strains, and this 
is especially true of American families, even those 
of "purest" blood. 

By this commingling of different lines many 
new combinations of characters arc produced and 

47 



48 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

some of these combinations may be superior to 
either parental type, while others may be inferior. 
In the language of genetics all the offspring of 
parents of different breeds or strains are "hy- 
brids," though in common usage this term is ap- 
plied only where the parents belong to different 
species, subspecies, or races. Mongrels or hy- 
brids are not always inferior to their parents nor 
are these terms necessarily ones of reproach, as 
popular usage would indicate. Bateson says that 
most of the new varieties of cultivated plants are 
the result of deliberate crossing. This is the proc- 
ess which Burbank has followed with such wonder- 
ful success in his experiments. Where two breeds 
have certain qualities which are desirable and others 
which are undesirable, it is often possible by cross- 
ing them to get a few hybrids in which the good 
qualities of both breeds are combined and the bad 
ones ehminated. Many species of domesticated 
animals and cultivated plants are of hybrid origin; 
among these are probably dogs, cats, cattle, horses, 
sheep, pigs, poultry; wheat, oats, rice, plums, 
cherries, etc. 

We are quite accustomed, and more or less 
reconciled, to the intermingling of European races, 
but the average white person, at least, is unable 
to look upon the commingling of blood of the pri- 
mary races of mankind without serious misgivings 
as to its effect on the future of the species. Within 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 49 

certain limits cross-breeding of animals and plants 
seems to produce increased vigor,* and there is no 
doubt that highly desirable combinations of the 
characters of different breeds can thus be made. 
It is generally believed by Englishmen that the 
Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Norman-French, 
Scotch-Irish combinations were very good ones, 
and Americans would point to the good results of 
the crossing of English, Scotch, Irish, French, 
Dutch, German, and Scandinavian stocks. 

But it is a general belief that the crossing of 
distinct species or subspecies does not lead to 
improvement, and it is said that the actual results 
of the crossing of white, black, and red races in 
South America, Mexico, and the West Indies, or 
of brown, yellow, and white races in Polynesia, 
has not produced a type superior to the best of 
those that entered into the combination. Stoddard 
(p. 116) says that "Most informed observers agree 
that the mixed-bloods of Latin America are dis- 
tinctly inferior to the whites. This applies to 
both mestizos and mulattoes, albeit the mestizo 
(the cross between white and Indian) seems less 
inferior than the mulatto — the cross between 
white and black. As for the zambo, the Indian- 
negro cross, everybody is agreed that it is a very 
bad one." On this subject he quotes Louis Agassiz 
as follows: — "Let any one who doubts the evil of 

* This has been called in question by King, East, and others. 



50 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

this mixture of races, and is inclined from mistaken 
philanthropy to break down all barriers between 
them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deteri- 
oration consequent upon the amalgamation of 
races, more wide-spread here than in any country 
in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best 
qualities of the white man, the negro, and the 
Indian, leaving a mongrel, nondescript type, defi- 
cient in physical and mental energy." 

Nevertheless it must be remembered that in 
most instances the white blood, at least, which 
entered into these combinations was not of very 
high quality, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion 
that Mendelian heredity, which is operative here 
as everywhere else, will lead to all kinds of combi- 
nations — good, bad, and indifferent — even among 
the offspring of the same parents, and much more 
among offspring of different parents. It is highly 
probable that while some of these hybrids may show 
all the bad qualities of both parents, others may 
show the good qualities of both and indeed in 
this respect resemble the children in any pure- 
bred family. But it is practically certain that the 
general or average results of the crossing of a su- 
perior and an inferior race are to strike a balance 
somewhere between the two. This is no contra- 
diction of the principles of Mendelian inheritance 
but rather the application of these principles to a 
general population. The general effect of the 
hybridization of races cannot fail to lead to a lower- 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 51 

ing of the qualities of the higher race and a raising 
of the qualities of the lower one. 

Which are the higher and which the lower races 
of mankind must depend largely upon the point 
of view and the qualities under consideration. 
No race has a monopoly of good or bad qualities; 
all that can be said is that certain traits are more 
frequently found in one race than in another. 

In love of adventure, of discovery, and of freedom 
within the limits of social order the white race is 
probably supreme, and these qualities under favor- 
able environment have led to its great scientific, 
industrial, and political development. In virility, 
conservatism, and reverence for social obligations 
the yellow race, as a whole, is probably superior 
to the white. If the white race worships liberty, 
the yellow race deifies duty; if the former is socially 
centrifugal, the latter is centripetal. The brown, 
red, and black races each have their characteristic 
virtues and defects which have become proverbial. 
Every race has contributed something of value to 
civiHzation, though there can be no doubt that 
the white, yellow, and brown races lead, and prob- 
ably in the order named. 

No doubt if all the good qualities of different 
races could be combined and all of the bad quali- 
ties eliminated the result would be a type greatly 
superior to any existing race. In domestic animals 
and cultivated plants such combinations and elimi- 
nations are frequently made, and if a higher power 



52 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

should deal with man as he does with his domesti- 
cated animals, no doubt it would be possible to 
bring about similar results in the human species. 

Even if we are horrified by the thought, we can- 
not hide the fact that all present signs point to an 
intimate commingling of all existing human types 
within the next five or ten thousand years at most. 
Unless we can re-establish geographical isolation 
of races, we cannot prevent their interbreeding. 
By rigid laws excluding immigrants of other races, 
such as they have at present in New Zealand and 
Australia, it may be possible for a time to main- 
tain the purity of the white race in certain countries, 
but with the constantly increasing intercommuni- 
cations between all lands and peoples such artificial 
barriers will probably prove as ineffectual in the 
long run as the Great Wall of China. The races of 
the world are not drawing apart but together, and 
it needs only the vision that will look ahead a few 
thousand years to see the blending of all racial 
currents into a common stream. 

What the relative contributions of existing races 
to this composite race will be is an interesting 
speculation. Relative viability and fecundity of 
different races and hybrids as well as psychological 
affinities and antipathies are important factors in 
this problem. There is in general much less senti- 
ment for racial purity on the part of colored races 
than in the case of the white race, and on the part 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 53 

of white men than of white women, consequently 
white blood will diffuse more rapidly through col- 
ored populations than colored blood through the 
white. More important still is the fact that for 
centuries to come Europe, North America, and 
Australasia will continue to be the centres of the 
white race; China and Japan of the yellow race; 
and Africa of the black race, but on the borders 
around these centres, where the races meet and 
overlap, there will be miscegenation. In these 
centres of the white, yellow, and black races we may 
assume that the populations will for a long time 
remain predominantly white, yellow, or black, but 
with increasing infiltration of foreign blood. The 
longer this segregation can be maintained the larger, 
other factors being equal, will become the ratio of 
whites to other races and the greater will be their 
contribution to the composite race. Every con- 
sideration should lead those who believe in the 
superiority of the white race to strive to preserve 
its purity and to establish and maintain the segre- 
gation of the races, for the longer this is maintained 
the greater the preponderance of the white race 
will be, but in the end amalgamation of all races 
in all parts of the world will probably be as complete 
as in the case of Greeks, Latins, Saracens, Nor- 
mans, and Africans in Sicily and Southern Italy. 



VI 

PRESENT AND FUTURE EVOLUTION OF 

MAN 

A. Physical Evolution 

Since the beginnings of recorded history there 
have been very few and wholly minor evolutionary 
changes in the body of man. Chief among these 
are the decreasing size of the little toe and perhaps 
a corresponding increase in the size of the great 
toe; decreasing size and strength of the teeth, 
especially of the wisdom teeth; and probably a 
general lowering of the perfection of sense-organs.* 

These changes are in the main degenerative ones 
due to the less rigid elimination of physical im- 
perfections under conditions of civilization than in 
a state of barbarism or savagery. Such changes 
are insignificant as compared with the enormous 
changes which led to the evolution of man from 
prehuman ancestors. 

Individual variations due to hybridization or to 
environmental influences are always present but 
they have little evolutionary value. By hybridi- 
zation of various races and stocks there has come 
to be a complicated intermixture of racial charac- 

*See Osborn, H. F, "Contemporary Evolution of Man." 

54 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 55 

ters; new combinations of characters are thus 
produced, but new individual characters have not 
been evolved by hybridization. By changes in 
environment modifications have been produced in 
development but not in heredity, these are fluctua- 
tions and not mutations. 

To a certain extent evolution may be regarded as 
a response of the organism to environment, whether 
we have regard to the origin of mutations in the 
germplasm or to the survival of mutations after 
they have arisen. But in the case of man the 
physical environment has probably far less evolu- 
tionary value than in lower animals, for by means 
of intelligence man is able, to a great extent, to 
control his environment. In cold climates he does 
not need to grow a thicker coat of hair in order to 
keep from freezing to death; he can put on or off 
heavier clothing, as he pleases; he can even change 
the climate of his residence to suit his needs. 
Shortage of one kind of food does not compel him 
to undergo changes of teeth and stomach to fit 
him to use other foods; he can produce more food 
of the first kind or can so change and modify new 
kinds of food that the old digestive system can deal 
with them. Therefore to the extent that evolution 
depends upon changing physical environment, man 
is to a great extent removed from such influences 
since he can control his environment. 

Furthermore the greatest of the directing factors 



56 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

of evolution, namely natural selection, or the sur- 
vival of the fittest individuals, has been largely- 
nullified in civiUzed society. By the most extraor- 
dinary efforts we manage to save the weak and 
deformed in body, the feeble-minded and insane, 
the evil and antisocial. We are just beginning to 
realize that intelligent human selection must take 
the place of natural selection and that the most un- 
fit must be prevented from perpetuating their kind; 
but is it not evident that the stream cannot rise 
higher than its source, and that the most that can 
be expected from such artificial selection is that 
mankind as a whole shall approach somewhat 
nearer to the level of the best individuals of the 
past and present? 

Eugenics 

Many persons who recognize that human evolu- 
tion is not progressing favorably look to eugenics, 
or selective mating, as the best available method of 
promoting human progress. And there is no doubt 
that if the same methods which have been applied 
to the breeding of domestic animals and plants 
could be applied to man, many important improve- 
ments in the human stock could be effected. 
Chiefly by means of selective breeding, all of the 
best types of domesticated animals and cultivated 
plants have been produced, or rather made up and 
isolated, for the breeder can only wait and watch 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 57 

for favorable mutations to appear; once they have 
appeared, he can by appropriate cross-breeding 
combine these new quahties with other desirable 
ones, and after he has made up a desirable combi- 
nation he can, by close inbreeding, perpetuate it 
and thus produce a new breed or race. 

Mutations of many sorts, good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent, are occurring in the human race, and by cross- 
breeding good combinations as well as bad ones are 
produced. Under a system of selective mating 
comparable to that practised by animal and plant 
breeders, it would be possible to perpetuate the 
good combinations and eliminate the bad and thus 
to improve the human breed, but this would in- 
volve such changes in our ideas of monogamy and 
morality as are scarcely conceivable. And even 
such a thoroughgoing system of eugenics would not 
really lead to progressive evolution, with the forma- 
tion of new characters and the emergence of a new 
type of man, but only to new combinations of exist- 
ing characters. 

One of the serious difficulties in the way of a really 
thoroughgoing system of eugenics is the impossi- 
bility of determining what combinations are really 
best and how to bring them about. Until we know 
vastly more about the genesis of personahty than 
we do now, positive eugenics must be a relatively 
weak and blundering procedure. It would probab- 
ly have robbed the world of some of its greatest 



58 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

men, whose antecedents were most unpromising. 
The most intelligent eugenicist cannot tell us how 
to get the best results; he can rarely, if ever, get 
children of his own that are entirely satisfactory; 
usually the most that he can do is to tell us how 
to avoid the worst results. As Huxley says: "The 
points of a good or bad citizen are really far harder 
to discern than those of a puppy or a short-horn 
calf. ... I sometimes wonder whether people 
who talk so freely about extirpating the unfit, ever 
dispassionately consider their own history. Surely 
one must be very 'fit' indeed not to know of an 
occasion, or perhaps two, in one's life when it would 
have been only too easy to qualify for a place 
among the unfit." * 

In all domestic animals and cultivated plants 
it is found that the breeder can only sort out and 
recombine the characters which are given; he 
cannot make new characters or hereditary factors, 
and consequently he soon reaches the limits of the 
possible improvement of a breed and must then 
wait until a new variation or mutation appears. 
Similarly the eugenicist, even if he could control 
human breeding as thoroughly as the animal 
breeder, could not expect to bring about indefinite 
improvement, but would soon reach a limit in every 
line beyond which he could not go until a new 
mutation furnished the material. And even muta- 

* Huxley, T. H. "Evolution and Ethics," p. 39. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 59 

tions have their limits, beyond which they cannot 
go without upsetting the entire organic equiHbrium. 

It is conceivable, though not probable, that the 
time may come when we may learn how to produce 
human mutations, possibly how to produce good 
mutations. If this should ever happen we should 
have a wonderful opportunity to speed up and 
control human evolution. But at present this is 
merely a dream, and there is no likelihood that it 
will ever be realized. Important, therefore, as 
eugenics is in bringing about better combinations 
of hereditary traits, it does not hold forth the prom- 
ise of endless progress. 

From all these points of view it is evident that 
the conception of unlimited evolutionary progress 
in any particular line, whether among plants, 
animals, or men is a mere chimera. In every line 
of progress a limit is sooner or later reached, beyond 
which it is not possible to go. Further progress, 
if it occurs at all, must be in other lines. 

For at least one hundred centuries there has been 
no notable progress in the evolution of the human 
body. The limits of physical evolution have appar- 
ently been reached in the most perfect specimens 
of mankind. The fact that man is not now evolv- 
ing rapidly, if at all, is often taken to mean that he 
was always as he is now, that he never did evolve, 
but the evidence is all against this. On the other 
hand, it is said by those who believe in endless prog- 



6o PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

ress that ten thousand years is entirely too brief 
a time in which to look for marked evolutionary 
advance, and we are admonished to remember that 
evolution is slow and that time is long; but, after 
all, the time available for evolution is not infinite, 
and ten thousand years representing three or four 
hundred human generations is quite long enough 
to reveal any marked tendency in evolution. 

There can be no doubt that human evolution 
has halted, either temporarily or permanently, 
and when we consider the fact that in every line 
of evolution progress is most rapid at first and then 
slows down until it stops, we cannot avoid the sus- 
picion that in those lines in which human evolution 
has gone farthest and fastest it has practically 
come to an end. At least we may affirm that there 
is no prospect that the hand, the eye, or the brain 
of man will ever be much more complex or perfect 
than at present. It is, of course, possible that the 
hand of man might evolve into a more perfect 
climbing, swimming, or flying organ, but such spe- 
cialization would unfit it to do the many duties 
which it now performs and upon which human 
progress has so largely depended. It is possible 
that man might develop the telescopic vision of 
an eagle or the microscopic vision of a fly, but 
what advantage would there be in such specializa- 
tion when by means of his inventions he can have 
both telescopic and microscopic vision far better 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 6i 

than any other creature in the world possesses ? It 
is, of course, possible that the brain of man may 
undergo further evolution in the future, just as it is 
possible that the elephant may evolve a longer trunk 
or the giraffe a longer neck. But the size of the 
human brain has not increased since the times of 
the Cro-Magnon race, say 20,000 years ago, and the 
great prevalence of nervous disorders in the most 
highly intelUgent classes of the present day indi- 
cates that the nervous system has already de- 
veloped to a point where it is getting out of balance 
with the other vital functions. In every line of 
progressive evolution there comes a time when 
specialization can go no farther without interfering 
with the harmonious interrelation of parts and thus 
breaking down co-operation. 

In most respects man is a generalized rather than 
a highly specialized type of vertebrate, as is shown 
by his hands, feet, limbs, teeth, food, digestive 
system, and sense-organs, and there is no evidence 
that in the future he will become more highly 
specialized in these regards; on the contrary, so 
far as these animal functions are concerned, present 
tendencies in human evolution seem in the main to 
be making for a simpler and more generalized or- 
ganism, as is shown in the simplification of many 
organs and systems, the progressive degeneration 
of certain parts, and the presence of many rudi- 
mentary structures. 



62 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

However in the structures and functions of the 
human brain progressive evolution has gone farther 
than in the case of any other creature, and this 
combination of a highly specialized brain with 
other organs of a more generalized type has been 
of the greatest advantage in human evolution, for 
it has made possible at the same time unequalled 
intelligence and remarkable plasticity and adapta- 
bility of bodily functions. 

I suppose that from the evolutionary point of 
view the most perfect type of man would be one 
in which the brain had reached the highest possible 
stage of differentiation and in which the rest of 
the body remained in a relatively generalized con- 
dition. H. G. Wells, who was a zoologist before he 
became a writer of fiction and history, represents 
the Martians, who are often imagined to have 
evolved farther than man, as having enormous 
brains and undifferentiated bodies, little more than 
generalized protoplasm. But man requires diges- 
tive, circulatory, respiratory, and reproductive 
systems for his survival as well as a nervous system, 
and if the latter becomes so developed that it 
destroys the proper balance, all comes to an end. 
The great increase in nervous and mental disorders 
and the increasing sterility of the intellectual 
classes warn us that for the present at least the 
evolution of the brain and nervous system of man 
has practically reached its limit. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 63 

Metchnikoff* has pointed out many disharmo- 
nies or unfitnesses in the human organization affect- 
ing digestion, reproduction, and self-preservation; 
indeed all organs and functions of the human body 
may show these disharmonies. All of pathology 
and most of the subject-matter of medicine is con- 
cerned with such disharmonies, and they are found 
not merely in man's bodily structures and functions 
but also in his mental and social life. Indeed such 
disharmonies are illustrations of the fact that 
nowhere in the living world are adaptations perfect 
or complete, and although the worst failures are 
quickly eliminated, so that there is a tendency for 
adaptations to become more and more perfect, yet 
from a variety of causes, failures of old adaptations 
continue to occur and new environmental condi- 
tions arise to which new adaptations must be 
made. 

While it is true that even the oldest and most 
complete adaptations are rarely, if ever, ideally 
perfect, it is especially in the more recent adapta- 
tions to new conditions of life that failure of adjust- 
ment is most evident. In the case of man there 
are partial failures of adjustment to even so ancient 
a condition as the erect posture, and in the case of 
more recent changes of condition or environment, 
such as modern food, clothing, housing, and indus- 
try, or the parasitic and germ diseases that accom- 

* Metchnikoff, E, "The Nature of Man," New York, 1903. 



64 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

pany civilization and dense populations, such fail- 
ures or disharmonies are much more evident. If 
the environment should remain fairly constant, it 
is probable that the human organism would in 
time adjust itself to these new conditions. There is 
evidence of an increasing immunity of civilized 
races to certain diseases, and in time, if natural 
selection were allowed to work without interference, 
it is probable that complete immunity to some of 
these diseases might become general. But, on the 
other hand, modern medicine is finding ways to 
control and even eliminate certain of these diseases 
in a way much more rapid and less destructive to 
human life than is natural selection. Here again, as 
in so many other instances, intelligence is replac- 
ing the blind forces of nature, and human evolution 
is progressing not so much by adaptation of the 
organism to the environment as of the environment 
to the organism. 

The prolongation of individual human lives by 
means of medicine, surgery, and general scientific 
knowledge has led many persons to hope that the 
present maximum length of life may be greatly 
extended in the future so that men may once more 
reach the reputed ages of the patriarchs. But the 
saving of individual lives has not extended the 
maximum length of life. The oldest individuals 
to-day are no older than those of prescientific 
times. The average life of the race has been length- 
ened chiefly through the reduction of infant mor- 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 65 

tality. But since it has been proven that longevity 
is hereditary, it may well be that the artificial 
prolongation of the lives of the hereditarily weak 
and short-lived may actually reduce the natural 
longevity of the race as a whole. 

In any event there is no probability that science 
will greatly extend the present maximum length 
of life, and there is no basis whatever for the hope 
which is sometimes expressed that it will ultimately 
banish death altogether. How fortunate this is 
will be appreciated when it is recalled that without 
death and the succession of generations there could 
be little or no evolution and that under present 
conditions immortality of the body would be the 
greatest possible hindrance to human progress. 

By eugenics and euthenics the general level of 
physical development of man may be improved 
just as it has been in many domestic animals; 
many diseases may be eliminated and immunity to 
others may be increased, feeble-bodiedness and 
feeble-mindedness may disappear and the race as 
a whole may be made more hardy; but there are 
no indications that future man will be much more 
perfect in body than the most perfect individuals 
of the present, or than the most perfect men and 
women in the days of Phidias and Praxiteles. 

B. Intellectual Evolution 

No one can doubt that there has been a wonder- 
ful development of intellect throughout the eourse 



66 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

of past evolution. Among the vertebrates the 
class of fishes which came first in the course of 
evolution is least intelligent, while birds and mam- 
mals which came last are most intelhgent. And 
of all orders of mammals the higher Primates, which 
are the most recent in origin, show the greatest 
intelligence. Similarly in the case of man, there is 
abundant evidence that there has been growth of 
intelligence from the earliest to the latest types and 
that this development has gone farther in some 
races than in others. 

Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that 
even in the most intelligent races and individuals 
there is still much room for intellectual growth; 
and when we consider the great mass of irrational 
and emotional mankind, we are impressed with the 
thought that the race as a whole is just emerging 
from unreason and that instinct and emotion are 
still the masters of life. 

Surely there is great room for improvement here, 
but so, also, is there room for intellectual improve- 
ment in monkeys and dogs and all other animals 
below man. The fact that there is room for im- 
provement by no means signifies that improvement 
will take place. Just as in the case of physical 
evolution, so here, also, there are limits beyond 
which intellectual evolution cannot go, and these 
limits are far short of ideal perfection. The rec- 
ord of the intellectual development of mankind 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 67 

during the historic period may seem to refute this 
conclusion and to prove that even if men are not 
growing more perfect physically they are growing 
more perfect intellectually. Let us examine some- 
what critically this claim. 

We certainly know more things than the ancients 
did, and we are proud to think that 

''The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 

suns." 

But it is most important to distinguish between 
knowledge and intellect, between things known and 
the capacity for knowing. 

By means of language, tradition, and writing 
the experiences of past generations can be handed 
on to present and future ones, and thus each 
generation may receive the knowledge accumu- 
lated throughout the past. In this sense we are 
"the heirs of all the ages." 

Knowledge is certainly growing, but is intellec- 
tual capacity increasing ? Does any one think that 
in the past two or three thousand years there has 
been any increase in human intellect comparable 
with the increase in knowledge? Do the best 
minds of to-day excel the minds of Socrates and 
Plato and Aristotle? On the contrary, it is the 
opinion of those who have studied the subject 
most that no modern race of men is the equal 
intellectually of the ancient Greek race. 



68 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

In the two centuries between 500 and 300 B. C. the small 
and relatively barren country of Attica, with an area and 
total population about equal to that of the present State of 
Rhode Island, but with less than one-fifth as many free 
persons, produced at least 25 illustrious men. Among 
statesmen and commanders there were: Miltiades, Them- 
istocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Phocion; among poets, 
^schylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes; among 
philosophers and men of science, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 
Demetrius, Theophrastus; among architects and artists, 
Ictinus, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polygnotus; among historians, 
Thucydides and Xenophon; among orators, iEschines, De- 
mosthenes, Isocrates, Lysias. 

In this small country in the space of two centuries there 
appeared such a galaxy of illustrious men as has never been 
found on the whole earth in any two centuries since that 
time. Galton concludes that the average ability of the 
Athenian race of that period was, on the lowest estimate, 
as much greater than that of the English race of the present 
day as the latter is above that of the African negro.* 

There has been no notable progress in the intel- 
lectual capacity of man in the past two or three 
thousand years, and it seems probable that the 
limits of intellectual evolution have been reached 
in the greatest minds of the race. Even in the most 
distant future there may never appear greater 
geniuses than Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Shakes- 
peare, Newton, Darwin. 

Undoubtedly eugenics and education can do 
much to raise the intellectual level of the general 
mass, but they cannot create a new order of in- 

* Conklin. "Heredity and Environment," 1920, p. 276. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 69 

tellect. Increasing size of brain and complexity of 
nervous organization lead to mental and physical 
instability and disharmony, and the great increase 
in nervous and mental diseases in modern life warns 
us that there is a limit to intellectual evolution. 

The brain has its limits as a storehouse, and it , 
necessarily follows that with knowledge continu- 
ally incfeasing and intellectual capacity remaining 
stationary each individual mind can take in only 
a small portion of the sum of human knowledge. 
In this age intellectual specialization is absolutely 
necessary. There can never again be an Aristotle, 
nor even a Descartes or Humboldt. Progress in 
intellectual evolution, no less than in physical, 
lies in the direction of increasing specialization and 
co-operation, but this progress is no longer taking 
place within the individual but in the specialization 
and co-operation of many individuals. The intel- 
lectual evolution of the individual has virtually 
come to an end, but the intellectual evolution of 
groups of individuals is only at its beginning. 

C. Social Evolution 

But if the evolution of the human individual has 
come to an end, certainly the evolution of human 
society has not. In social evolution a new path of 
progress has been found the end of which no one 
can foresee. 

Evolution has progressed from one-celled organ- 



70 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

isms to many-celled, from small and simple organ- 
isms to larger and more complex ones. By the union 
of individuals into families and tribes and nations, 
still larger and more complex units of organization 
were formed, until now, by intelligent human co- 
operation, we have governmental units which in- 
clude hundreds of millions of men, and we are on 
the eve of bringing together into some form of 
league or federation all the peoples of the earth. 

Three main stages in the past evolution of human 
culture (the material aspect of which may be de- 
fined as knowledge of, and control over, environ- 
ment) are generally recognized, viz.: Savagery, 
Barbarism, and Civilization. The lowest stages of 
human culture, as contrasted with prehuman con- 
ditions, begin with the fashioning of crude stone 
implements and with the use of fire. Middle stages 
are marked by the making of beautiful stone imple- 
ments and by the introduction of the use of copper 
and bronze. The highest stage is characterized 
by the use of iron, the invention of writing and all 
that goes with this, and by increasing knowledge 
of, and control over, the forces of nature. Possibly 
future historians may record that super-civiliza- 
tion began with the end of wars and the co-operation 
of all the peoples of the earth. At least there is 
every evidence that human culture is still advancing 
and that the end is not yet in sight. 

Different civilizations of the past have had their 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 71 

birth, maturity, and death, and our civilization may 
possibly follow a similar course, but as generation 
follows generation, so one civilization gives birth 
to another. After civilization had once appeared 
it was never entirely lost from all the earth. It 
decayed in Egypt and Babylonia, iDut the torch 
lighted there was caught up by Phoenicia, Greece, 
and Rome, and when these went down the flame 
was passed on to other lands and peoples. 

In the whole of this evolution of culture each 
age or people builds upon preceding ones, and prog- 
ress has been the result of co-operative ejGfort. 
Each great advance was due to the discoveries of 
one, or at most of a few gifted men, but these dis- 
coveries could not have been made except for the 
work which had gone before. Probably the great- 
est genius of this or of any former age, if thrown 
entirely upon his own resources without the in- 
struction, experience, or achievements of others to 
guide and help him, would be unable to invent a 
phonetic alphabet, to smelt iron ore, to make 
bronze implements, or even to start a fire by arti- 
ficial means. Increasing knowledge of, and control 
over, nature is the result of the labors of countless 
individuals, the preservation of these results and 
the handing down of them to successive generations. 
The individual man has not grown more perfect 
physically or intellectually, but society has ad- 
vanced from age to age because it has profited by 



72 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

experiences of the past. Those who would wipe out 
present institutions and throw away all the dearly 
bought experiences of the past would not only 
destroy the possibilities of progress but they would 
wreck civilization and reduce man to savagery. 

At present social evolution is proceeding at a 
rate which is amazing if not alarming. All kinds 
of variations and mutations of the social organiza- 
tion are occurring. Whole nations are making 
the most stupendous experiments, some of which 
are bound to end disastrously, but if only we have 
the intelligence to learn by the experience of others, 
and the wisdom to preserve the good results of 
these experiments and to eliminate the bad, social 
progress will be certain and rapid. 

The fact that the evolution of human society 
and of human inventions has gone forward so rapid- 
ly that every one can see the great progress made in 
his own lifetime, led Samuel Butler* and certain 
followers of hisf to the conclusion that social and 
intellectual evolution is the cause of physical 
evolution. 

Butler observed that evolution in man does not 
take place to any important extent in his body 
but that it is proceeding with great rapidity in the 
tools, weapons, and machines which man uses aixl 



* Butler, Samuel. "Erewhon," London, 1908. 
t Darbishire, A. D. "Introduction to a Biology," New York, 
1917. 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 73 

which are, in his words, "limbs which are loose 
and lie about detached." Intellect and invention 
are the motive power in this form of evolution, and 
he assumes that the same may be true of all evolu- 
tion, physical and social as well as intellectual. 
Others maintain that "cell intelligence," which 
is assumed to be present in all protoplasm, is the 
cause of all forms of evolution.* 

Such a conception not only confuses the different 
lines of evolution and their causes, but it really 
denies all the facts and evidences in the case by 
putting the highest and latest product of the proc- 
ess into its earliest and most elemental stages. 
It is not a theory of evolution but rather one of 
involution or creation; it is not a new conception 
of life and its origin but the oldest known concep- 
tion. 

Dissatisfaction with current views must be great 
indeed, and the evidence against those views and 
in favor of the ancient ones must be very convinc- 
ing to justify such a reaction. And yet almost no 
evidence is presented against the generally accepted 
view and in favor of the ancient one. Such essays 
evidently owe their origin to emotion rather than 
to reason, to sentiment rather than science; they 
are based upon desire rather than evidence, and 
they appeal especially to those who are able to 

* Quevli, N. "Cell Intelligence the Cause of Evolution," Min- 
neapolis, 1916. 



74 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

believe what they desire to believe and who are 
accustomed to say of evolution, "I prefer to trace 
my origin to the Garden of Eden rather than to a 
zoological garden," — as if it were possible for a ra- 
tional being to believe anything he prefers to believe ! 

De Vries, Morgan, and many others have shown 
that physical evolution proceeds by sudden changes 
known as mutations, rather than by minute and 
continuous variations, and de Vries supposes that 
there are periods of mutation alternating with 
periods of relative stability. The present seems to 
be a mutation period in the evolution of human 
society. One often hears the expression that cer- 
tain social changes must come ''by evolution or by 
revolution." But there is such a thing as evolution 
by revolution, and it seems probable that to-day 
we are witnessing this process in human society. 
Whether such evolution is going forward or back- 
ward the future only will reveal. 

The rapidity of social evolution as contrasted 
with the slowness of physical evolution is probably 
due to the fact that changes in germplasm occur 
much more slowly than changes in habits. In 
intelligent society past experiences are transmitted 
to future generations, each generation standing on 
the shoulders, as it were, of the preceding one, 
whereas the physical man begins his development 
anew in each generation from the germ cells, and if 
he inherits any bodily features acquired by the 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 75 

experiences of his ancestors — a thing which seems 
most doubtful — they are very few. On the other 
hand, individual experiences are more quickly 
impressed upon the intellect than upon the body 
or the instincts. Intelligence is a great time-saver, 
as contrasted with "trial and error." Changes in 
behavior due to changes in reflexes or instincts are 
almost, if not quite, as slow as changes in germplasm 
itself, but changes due to intelligence may take 
place with "the rapidity of thought"; and where 
such changes can be transmitted by "social inheri- 
tance " to the next generation, as is true of human 
experiences and learning and institutions, progress 
is most rapid. In this respect social progress is 
entirely comparable to ontogeny, or the develop- 
ment of the individual, where each step leads to 
the next and where every later stage is built di- 
rectly on an ear Her one. Indeed, what we call 
social evolution in any single race or people is 
really the individual development or ontogeny of 
that particular society. 

Evolution has progressed from amoeba to man; 
from reflexes to instincts, intelligence, and reason; 
from the solitary individual to the family, the 
tribe, the modern state, and, in spite of narrow- 
minded and reactionary politicians, we or our 
descendants wiU yet see the whole human race 
brought together into a Society of Nations, a 
^'Federation of the World." 



76 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

Just as there are many disharmonies or failures 
of adaptation in the human body and mind, so, also, 
there are many disharmonies in human society. 
In particular there are the conflicts of the social 
and antisocial instincts, of selfishness and altruism, 
justice and injustice, love and hate, peace and war; 
there is lacking in contemporary society that degree 
of specialization which would enable each individual 
to find the work and place where he would be most 
useful and there is a lamentable failure of co-opera- 
tion between individuals, classes, nations, and 
races. 

But throughout the course of evolution there has 
been a continual elimination of the least fit and a 
survival of the fit, and in the long run we may expect 
natural selection to lead to the elimination of the 
antisocial and to the increase of social specializa- 
tion and co-operation. Indeed, this is no mere 
matter of faith, but is a process which is going on 
more rapidly to-day than ever before in human 
history. The elimination of the socially unfit will 
ultimately give the world to the fit. 

The great goal toward which the human race is 
moving is the rational organization of society. 
The societies of ants, bees, and termites; of fishes, 
birds, and gregarious mammals are based wholly 
upon instincts, and while some of these societies 
are extraordinarily perfect, owing to the long and 
constant action of natural selection, they are rela- 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 77 

tively inflexible and unfitted to sudden changes 
of environment. Human society is less perfectly 
adapted to a particular, narrow environment than 
that of some social insects, but, thanks to intelli- 
gence and the capacity of learning by experience, 
it is vastly more plastic and perfectible. 

The short and narrow view of human society 
and history is often discouraging and at times it 
seems desperate, but the long view is more hopeful. 
The human race has a surprising amount of resili- 
ency and adaptability, it has passed through many 
terrible crises, many experiments have proved 
colossal failures, many nations and civilizations 
have gone down in the wreckage of time, and yet 
the race survives and society moves forward. Our 
cherished institutions and social organizations may 
be only temporary, but the records of social evolu- 
tion show that the world moves forward and justi- 
fies the faith that mankind will ultimately reach 
the goal of a really rational organization of human 
society. 

D. Man's Conquest of Nature 

The evolution of man is no longer Umited to his 
body or mind, nor even to society, but by adding 
to his own powers the forces of nature, man has 
entered upon a new path of progress. The differ- 
entiations of various members of a colony of ants 
or bees are limited to their bodies and are fixed and 



78 PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

irreversible; but in human society differentiations 
are no longer confined to the bodies of individuals 
but have become, as it were, extra-corporeal. 

By this control over nature man has taken into 
his evolution the whole of his environment. Al- 
though he is not as strong as the elephant nor as 
deft as the spider nor as swift as the antelope nor as 
powerful in the water as the whale or in the air as 
the eagle, yet by his control of the forces of nature 
outside of his body he can excel all animals in 
strength and deHcacy of movement, in speed and 
power on land, in water, and in air. 

This new path of progress is in all respects the 
most important which has ever been discovered 
by organisms, and no one can foresee the end of this 
process of annexing to our own powers the illimitable 
forces of the universe. 



VII 

WILL THERE BE A HIGHER ANIMAL 
THAN MAN? 

There is no probability that a higher animal 
than man will ever appear on the earth, and the 
only reason for surmising that other species of the 
genus Homo may appear in the future is the fact 
that there have been species in the past which do 
not exist at present. These prehistoric species have 
everywhere been replaced by the existing species, 
perhaps because they were intellectually inferior. 
It is possible, of course, that similar causes may lead 
to the elimination of the present species, but this 
does not seem probable for the following reasons: 

(i) All races of man may and do interbreed, 
owing to fertility inter se and to the lack of geo- 
graphical isolation; consequently there is a growing 
tendency to the breaking down of racial isolation 
and to the hybridization of existing races. This is 
clearly shown in all countries where races, even the 
most distinct, have been brought together, as in 
North and South America, the West Indies, Aus- 
tralasia, Polynesia, Asia, and Africa. Such hy- 
bridization may possibly lead to the production of 
new types or mutants, but these would probably 

79 



8o PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 

be ''swamped" and lost unless they were isolated. 
All present signs point to an intimate commingling 
of all existing human types within the next few 
thousand years at most. The breaking down of 
geographical and racial isolation will restrict further 
race diiferentiation, and this will probably work 
against the evolution of a still higher race. Even 
if new races may be developed by psychological or 
social selection there is no likelihood that new 
species will thus arise which will supplant the ex- 
isting species. 

(2) The development of moral and social ideals 
of equal justice for all people will prevent the ex- 
termination of inferior races, and democratic ideals 
of self-government and majority rule will probably 
prevent even the merciful elimination of all except 
the most perfect types. The majority cannot be 
expected to decree its own effacement; the most 
that can be expected is that the majority will elim- 
inate from reproduction only the most inferior and 
defective individuals. By this means the stand- 
ards of the race may be preserved at the present 
level, but they cannot be greatly advanced. No 
great improvement in domesticated animals or 
plants would be possible if breeders were able to 
eliminate only the most inferior individuals, and 
the same will certainly be true of human breeds. 
There is no present indication, therefore, that a new 
and higher species of man will develop on the earth, 



PATHS AND POSSIBILITIES 8i 

and there is no probability that some other genus 
or class or phylum may give rise to an animal 
physically, intellectually, and socially superior to 
man. 

It is possible, but not probable, that the entire 
human species may become extinct in advance of 
other higher animals; but even if this should hap- 
pen, from what other source could a superior animal 
arise? No other animal approaches man in intel- 
lectual capacity, upon which depend the rational 
organization of society and the conquest of all 
nature. 

However imperfect, irrational, and antisocial 
mankind may be; however much we may laugh or 
weep over his simian characteristics and at times 
sympathize with Mark Twain's comments on 
"the damned human race," we may feel confident 
that in the long ages of future evolution no other 
greatly superior animal will appear upon this planet. 
If a superior species is to appear it must come from 
human stock. 



II 

EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 



THE BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF 
SOCIETY 

A. Physical, Intellectual, Soclal Evolution 
NOT Antagonistic 

Evolution has proceeded along many lines and 
not along a single one; it is best represented, not 
by a ladder or scale but by a branching tree in 
which growth has ceased in certain branches but 
is still going on in others, and while many branches 
grow upward, some turn down. In one case it is 
progressive and in another retrogressive, in one 
case it leads to increased and in another to decreased 
size and complexity of structure; in one case to 
physical strength and combativeness, in another to 
weakness, cunning, and concealment. In man there 
have been three main lines of evolution — physical, 
intellectual, social. The fundamental causes of 
progress may be the same in all of these lines; 
it may be, for example, the survival of the fittest, 
but the standards of fitness are different in the 
three. Physically, the fittest is the most viable; 
intellectually, the fittest is the most rational; 
socially, the fittest is the most ethical. 

8s 



86 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

These three standards are often in conflict, 
they are always balanced against one another, but 
they are not mutually exclusive; all three may, 
and do, coexist in such a way that each strengthens 
the other. In his famous Romanes Lectures on 
"Evolution and Ethics," Huxley says:* "Let us 
understand, once for all, that the ethical progress 
of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic 
process, still less in running away from it, but in 
combating it." But I fancy that even in Huxley's 
thought the combat between ethical progress and 
the struggle for physical existence consisted in 
keeping this struggle within certain bounds rather 
than in eliminating it altogether. The progress of 
mankind involves the preservation of a proper bal- 
ance between physical, intellectual, and social fit- 
ness; no one of these must go so far as to harm or 
destroy either of the others. Least of all is there 
any justification for the views of Bernhardi and 
other biological militarists, that the most powerful, 
domineering, and combative are the fittest socially. 
We know as a certainty that this is not the case, and 
that such ideas would lead to the utter destruction 
of society. Mankind may have lost something in 
physical fitness by curbing "Nature red in tooth 
and claw," but it has gained immeasurably through 
the establishment of society, which would have 
been impossible with unlimited struggle for exist- 

* "Evolution and Ethics," p. 83. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 87 

ence between individuals, classes, and nations. 
Darwin himself, long ago, protested against this 
mistaken application of natural selection to society 
and showed that in social evolution the most ethical 
is the most fit.* 

But while these different lines of evolution are 
not necessarily antagonistic it is important to re- 
member that all life processes, including evolpdon, 
are balanced, as it were, between contending fo'r^t? 
and principles. Life itself, as well as evolutioD^ 
is a continual adjustment of internal to external 
conditions, a balance between constructive and 
destructive processes, a combination of differentia- 
tion and integration, of variation and inheritance, 
a compromise between the needs of the individual 
and those of the species. And in addition to these 
conflicting relations we find in man the opposition 
of instinct and intelligence, emotion and reason, 
selfishness and altruism, individual freedom and 
social obligation. Progress is the product of the 
harmonious correlation of organism and environ- 
ment, specialization and co-operation, instinct and 
intelligence, liberty and duty. 

In short it is impossible for man to make real 
and lasting progress by destroying the balance 
which exists between these three lines of evolution. 



* In a letter to Wallace he says that "the struggle between the 
races of man depended entirely on intellectual and moral qualities" 
("More Letters of Charles Darwin," vol. II, p. 33). 



S& EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

Here, as everywhere else in the world of living 
things, such progress consists in maintaining a 
proper balance between many desirable ends. 

B. Social Progress Means Greater Special- 
ization AND Co-operation 

Organization, whether physical, intellectual, or 
socij^\~, means differentiation and integration, spe- 
cif lization and co-operation, diversity and har- 
Mony. Progressive evolution invariably and inevi- 
tably means increasing differentiation and integra- 
tion. In the long history of life upon the earth, 
organisms have varied in every possible way ; they 
may be said to have made millions and millions of 
experiments in finding the path of progressive 
evolution, and in every instance this path has been 
in the direction of greater speciahzation and co- 
operation. One-celled organisms, in which the 
greatest amount of individual Uberty is preserved 
to the separate cells, have undergone but little 
progressive evolution and have remained in prac- 
tically the same stage of organization for millions 
of years. Many-celled organisms, on the other 
hand, have undergone the most varied and exten- 
sive evolution; and this has been due to the fact 
that the specialization of single cells and their 
co-operation in the work of the organism as a 
whole has made possible the highest types of 
organisms. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 89 

In a similar way one may trace the evolution of 
animal societies from a condition in which extreme 
individualism prevails up to societies of ants, 
bees, and termites in which the specialization of 
individuals is higher, the mutual dependence more 
complete, and the work which the colony is able 
to perform is immensely greater and more perfect 
than could be accomplished by any number of 
individuals working separately. What the indi- 
vidual cannot do because of lack of strength or 
specialization or time, the social group can accom- 
plish with the strength and specialization of all 
and through long periods of time. 

What is true of insects in this respect is also true 
of men. It matters not that in the one case activi- 
ties are governed by instinct alone and in the other 
by intelligence as well as instinct; the final result, 
the biological ideal, is the same, whether the advan- 
tages of higher organization have been discovered 
by natural selection or by intelligence. If human 
society is to be something more than an aggrega- 
tion of individuals, if it is to accomplish more than 
can be performed by separate persons, it must be 
through higher and higher organization, that is 
through greater specialization and more complete 
co-operation. There is no doubt that the evolution 
of human society has been in this direction, and the 
entire past history of living things indicates that 
further progress of society must be along this line. 



90 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

C. Society Founded on Instincts 

The integrating factors in all animal societies 
are instincts rather than intelligence. That this 
is true of ants, bees, and wasps, of fishes, birds, 
wolves, and sheep no one will question. That it is 
equally true of human society is plainly apparent 
to any one who studies primitive man or who 
analyzes the behavior of even the highest races. 
Even in man, instinct is more universal and more 
powerful than reason; indeed, reason plays a rela- 
tively small part in the lives and activities of most 
men. The contrary opinion is due to our inveterate 
habit of acting instinctively and then attempting 
to explain to ourselves or to others the reason for 
the act. Indeed, mankind, as a whole, has but 
recently begun to emerge from a life of instinct to 
one of intelligence and reason.* Some races and 
some individuals have gone farther in this direction 
than others, but with the great mass of mankind 
instinct is still the guide of life. 

Descartes begins his famous "Discourse on 
Method" with these words: "Good sense or 
reason is, of all things among men, the most equally 
distributed." No modern philosopher or scientist 
would agree to this; on the contrary, he would say: 
"Instinct is, of all psychical things among men, the 

* On the transition from instinct to intelligence and reason, see 
Conklin, "Heredity and Environment," pp. 43-49. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 91 

most equally distributed." Instinct and not reason 
is the source and ultimate cause of human society 
as well as of most human behavior. 

The principal instincts of all animals are those 
which concern safety, food, and reproduction; 
the most important social instincts have to do 
with the defense, welfare, and perpetuity of the 
group. In addition to these general instincts the 
following more special ones have served to bind the 
higher mammals together in societies: 

(i) The instinct of service, especially between 
members of the same family or social 
group. 

(2) The fear of isolation, or disapproval, and the 

desire for fellowship, or sympathy. 

(3) The tendency to follow trusted leaders, but 

not to depart too far from precedents.* 

These are the integrating, co-ordinating, harmo- 
nizing bonds which unite men in societies. They 
are deep-seated instincts not easily overcome. 
The presence and power of these instincts in prac- 
tically all peoples of the earth has been demon- 
strated in a most remarkable manner during the 
Great War. It is reassuring to find that the inte- 
grative instincts on which society is founded have 
not disappeared, and while these foundations re- 
main let no one despair of the future of society. 

* See Trotter, " Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War," London, 
1916. 



92 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

On the other hand, among the higher mammals 
and especially among men there are disintegrative 
instincts or desires which tend to disrupt societies 
or at least to create disharmony. Among these 
are: 

(i) The desire for individual freedom, even when 
it conflicts with the welfare of society. 

(2) The tendency to limit social co-operation 
to groups or classes based upon family, 
racial, national, temperamental, environ- 
mental, industrial, intellectual, or religious 
homogeneity. 

Such disruptive instincts are not unknown in 
animal societies. Ant-colonies often wage relent- 
less war upon other colonies, even though they be 
of the same species. Under certain circumstances 
bees become ruthless robbers and marauders, 
waging a war of extermination upon weaker or 
defenseless colonies, and even upon other species 
of animals; indeed the robber instinct of bees 
seems to be a kind of frenzy, or madness, which is 
possibly the result of fear and the defensive instinct. 
In all animals the class instinct serves to bind to- 
gether more firmly the members of the same class 
or colony, while at the same time it widens the 
gaps between different classes and colonies. In- 
deed, it may be said that in animal societies there 
are practically no bonds between different groups 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 93 

or colonies. These class instincts are very evident 
among men. Fortunately they are opposed by 
the harmonizing and unifying instincts, and most 
of all by intelligence and reason. 

The incompleteness of integration, co-operation, 
and harmony in human society is due to the fact 
that imperfect intelligence and freedom have come 
in to interfere with instinct. Disharmony in our- 
selves and in society is the price we pay for personal 
intelligence and freedom. The more intelligence 
one has the greater is his freedom from purely 
instinctive responses, but man is never wholly 
free from the influences of instinct. The personal 
freedom which endangers human co-operation opens 
at the same time a new path of progress along ra- 
tional lines. In our individual behavior and in our 
social activities we now seek the ideal harmony of 
the hive, but on the higher plane of intelligence, 
freedom, and ethics. 

The past evolution of man has occurred almost 
entirely without conscious human guidance; but 
with the appearance of intellect and the capacity 
of profiting by experience a new and great oppor- 
tunity and responsibility has been given man of 
directing rationally and ethically his future evolu- 
tion. More than anything else, that which dis- 
tinguishes human society from that of other ani- 
mals is just this ability — incomplete though it is — 
to control instincts and emotions by intelligence 



94 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

and reason. Those who maintain that racial, 
national, and class antagonisms are inevitable be- 
cause they are instinctive, and that wars can never 
cease because man is by nature a fighting animal, 
really deny that mankind can ever learn by experi- 
ence; they look backward to the instinctive origins 
of society and not forward to its rational organiza- 
tion. We shall never cease to have instincts, but, 
unless they are balanced and controlled by reason, 
human society will revert to the level of the pack 
or herd or hive. The foundations of human society 
are laid in gregarious instincts, but upon these foun- 
dations human intelligence has erected that enor- 
mous structure which we call civilization. 



II 

PROGRESS IN HUMAN HISTORY 

The history of mankind seems to the casual 
observer an eternal struggle for existence or su- 
premacy on the part of individuals, tribes, classes, 
nations, and races. One ideal or people for a while 
gains ascendancy and then goes down before other 
ideals or peoples, and at times it seems that the 
human race learns nothing from experience. Some 
one has said that "the only thing we learn from 
history is that we learn nothing from it." Many 
persons maintain that "what has been will be"; 
wars, oppression, domination of one group by an- 
other will never cease either because they were 
ordained by the Creator or are caused by ineradica- 
ble traits of human nature. 

Human history viewed as such a record of un- 
connected events is comparable to natural history 
before the general acceptance of the doctrine of 
evolution, when every species of animal or plant 
was regarded as a distinct and special creation. 

The evolutionary view of history has now largely 
replaced this older view, and just as in the case of 
the evolution of organisms, so, also, in human his- 
tory we recognize series of changes genetically 

95 



96 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

connected but leading nowhere except to mere 
diversity, others which lead to increasing adapta- 
tion to peculiar conditions, and still others leading 
to increasing perfection and complexity of social 
organization — that is, divergent, adaptive, and pro- 
gressive types of evolution characterize human history 
as well as the history of animals and plants. As in 
the evolution of organisms, so, also, in human his- 
tory there have been innumerable changes or di- 
versities that have led nowhere; there have been 
many changes which have led merely to better 
adaptation to peculiar conditions; there have been 
very few lines of progress. 

Kant held that human progress consists in moral 
self-development and self-liberation from the do- 
minion of nature leading to a state of the greatest 
possible liberty. He recognized the development of 
reason in the human species and the establishment 
of universal justice through international action 
as the goal of history. Hegel, Fichte, and Michelet 
represented /reeJow as the aim of history ; Schelling, 
the harmonizing of freedom and necessity, of self- 
will and the universal will. Condorcet believed 
that the growth of equality between nations and 
classes — not absolute equality, but equality of 
right and liberty — was the chief lesson of history. 
Herder, Flint, and many others regard the growth 
of the idea of human unity, of universal brother- 
hood, as the chief line of progress throughout the 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 97 

historic era. Wells has recently undertaken to 
trace the increasing size of governmental units, 
the evolution of the world state, and the growth of 
the ideal of unification as one of the great lines of 
human progress. Others see in the progressive 
conquest of nature one of the chief lines of progress 
throughout history. To others the growing oppor- 
tunities, rights, and powers of the common man, 
in short, the growing spirit of democracy marks the 
greatest advance of human society. 

These lines of human progress are not conflicting, 
nor even independent of one another. The develop- 
ment of reason in the human race — that is, of ra- 
tional co-operation — must involve the develop- 
ment of universal justice. The growing freedom 
of the individual in body and mind must be recon- 
ciled with increasing social obligations. The de- 
velopment of the idea of human unity and brother- 
hood must ultimately carry with it the idea of 
equality of right and liberty, and of world unifica- 
tion. The conquest of nature means greater 
freedom through harnessing natural forces rather 
than human bodies, through controlling environ- 
ment rather than being controlled by it. And all 
of these lines of social progress are correlated with 
the growth of democracy. 

By placing exclusive or even undue emphasis 
upon ideals of individual freedom or of social 
obligations, of nationalism or of world unification. 



98 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

of class or race superiority or of democratic equality, 
different peoples and ages have built up great 
but unstable civilizations. Genuine and enduring 
progress can be achieved only by the reconciliation 
of these ideals, which are antagonistic only when 
held in extreme forms. 

Again and again in the evolution of animals and 
plants extreme specialization in certain lines has 
brought about rapid progress, but has led to a lack 
of stability and adaptability and has ended in 
extinction. And there is good reason to believe 
that the same is true of the evolution of human 
society. Extreme development of ideals of organi- 
zation and efficiency, or of liberty and equality, 
leads to an unbalanced state of society; stable 
progress consists in advances along many correlated 
lines. 

Specialization and co-operation under powerful 
autocracies were apparently more perfect in many 
ancient states than in any modern ones. Probably 
no modern state has equalled the perfection of such 
forced organization and efficiency as was present 
in Egypt under the Pyramid builders. Those pres- 
ent-day reformers who desire to force upon the 
masses of mankind the rule of intelligent and 
powerful autocracies in the interests of efficiency 
would do well to reflect upon the lessons of history. 

Life and evolution, man's body, mind, and so- 
ciety are founded on compromise. Fanatical 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 99 

individualism or socialism, universal equality or 
inequality, absolute autocracy or democracy find 
no foundation or counterpart in biology, for life 
and all of its activities consist in compromise, 
balance, adjustment between opposing principles. 



Ill 

THE BIOLOGICAL BASES OF 
DEMOCRACY 

These are some of the biological and historical 
backgrounds of human society. Let us now apply 
some of these principles of evolution and progress 
to that system of social organization which we call 
democracy. 

There have been, and still are, many kinds of 
democracy in many fields, and it is therefore diffi- 
cult to draw a very sharp and discriminating defi- 
nition of what is meant by this term. But it will 
be admitted, I think, that democracy in the widest 
sense means much more than a form of govern- 
ment, that it is indeed a system of social organiza- 
tion affecting almost every relation of man to man. 
// is a system which, ideally at least, attempts to 
equalize the opportunities and responsibilities of 
individuals in society. As thus defined it would 
apply not merely to government and the adminis- 
tration of justice but also to education and indi- 
vidual development, to industry and its reward, 
property. 

But this ideal of absolute equality has never been, 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY loi 

and can never be, fully realized in human society 
because nature has made men unequal in every 
respect — physically, intellectually, and morally — 
and there is no possible way in which such natural 
inequalities can be wholly eradicated. Further- 
more, the very nature of organization, that is, 
specialization and co-operation, implies inequali- 
ties and limitations; without these there could be 
no such thing as society or progress. A society 
in which every individual is absolutely free and 
equal would be not only an impossibility but also 
a contradiction in terms. 

Looked at merely as a system of government, a 
democracy in which all the people rule directly, 
as in ancient Greece, is an impossibility in any 
populous state. Instead, modern democracies are 
representative governments, in which the people 
as a whole choose their representatives to admin- 
ister the government for them. General policy 
may be determined by the people, but the details 
of carrying out of any policy must be left to chosen 
leaders. Further, it has been found necessary to 
hedge about even such a modified democracy as 
this by limiting suffrage to adult persons, not 
feeble-minded, insane, or criminal; and it is per- 
fectly evident that higher intellectual qualifica- 
tions are necessary. 

The mental tests used in our army revealed a 
surprising amount of illiteracy, and, what is much 



I02 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 



worse, an alarmingly low level of average intelli- 
gence. These tests were devised to measure intel- 
lectual capacity or inherited ability rather than 
acquired information or education, and for the first 
time they give us a means of estimating the approxi- 
mate number of persons in this country of low, 
mean, or high intelligence. The tests were of two 
sorts, the Alpha test for those who could read and 
write, the Beta test for all others. These tests were 
taken by about one million and seven hundred 
thousand drafted men, who may be assumed to 
have been somewhat above the average intelli- 
gence of the entire population since none who were 
evidently feeble-minded were drafted. Seven grades 
were recognized, ranging from A to D— , these 
grades being designated as follows: A '^ very superior 
intelligence," B "superior," C-f- "high average," 
C "average," C— "low average," D "inferior," 
D— "very inferior." The "mental ages" of these 
different grades and the relative numbers in each 
are shown in the following table: 



GRADE 


MENTAL AGE 


PER CENT OF 
WHOLE 


A 


18-19 

16-17 

15 

13-14 

12 

II 

10 


4K 

9 

i6>^ 

25 
20 

15 

ID 


B 


C+ 


C 


C- 


D 


D- 





EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 103 

Assuming that these drafted men are a fair 
sample of the entire population of approximately 
100 millions, this means that 45 millions, or nearly 
one-half of the whole population, will never develop 
mental capacity beyond the stage represented by a 
normal twelve-year-old child, and that only 13^ 
millions will ever show superior intelligence. 

When it is remembered that mental capacity is 
inherited, that parents of low intelligence generally 
produce children of low intelligence and that on 
the average they have more children than persons 
of high intelligence, and, furthermore, when we 
consider that the intellectual capacity or '^ mental 
age" can be changed very little by education we 
are in a position to appreciate the very serious 
condition which confronts us as a nation. 

We have always recognized that the success of 
democracy depends upon the intelligence of the 
people, but we have never before had any adequate 
conception of the very low level of the average 
intelligence of the nation. Furthermore, we have 
generally assumed that intelligence depended upon 
education and that general compulsory education 
would solve all our problems. Education is still 
one of our greatest needs, but, alas, it is not the 
magical panacea that was once supposed. Educa- 
tion can only bring to development the qualities 
which are potentially present; it cannot increase 
those potentialities or capacities; and the attempt 



I04 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

to educate a person of D grade beyond the fifth 
year of the elementary schools is usually wasted 
effort. 

Undoubtedly the ultimate standing and success 
of any popular government must depend upon the 
intelligence of its citizens, and yet owing to the 
larger families of the unintelligent and to the great 
influx of foreigners of low mental capacity, our 
average intelligence has probably been declining 
for the past twenty-five years at least. 

There is some demand, especially on the part of 
police authorities, that finger-prints be made of 
every person in the nation for purposes of identifi- 
cation; how much more desirable it is that every 
person be classified mentally! By this means we 
could avoid untold waste of time and effort in 
trying to give higher education to those incapable 
of profiting by it and in trying to fit the wrong 
persons into particular positions. And at the same 
time we should greatly increase the happiness and 
contentment of the people concerned, for nothing 
is so productive of unrest and discontent as the 
putting of men and women into positions which 
they are incapable of filling, or, worse still, of as- 
signing persons of high capacity to low-grade work. 
Let us have the finger-prints, but before everything 
else let us have a mental classification of all chil- 
dren of school age. When once this has been done 
perhaps the least intelligent group can ultimately 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 105 

be denied the suffrage as are imbeciles, insane, 
and criminals at present. 

All these things are limitations, adjustments, 
balances necessary to make democracy a practical 
system of government. Many of them were plainly 
expressed and others were implied in the founda- 
tions of our government. They are not arbitrary 
but necessary limitations of the ideal of universal 
liberty and equality. But there are other limita- 
tions in modern society which are not absolutely 
necessary and some of which are very undesirable, 
and there has recently arisen an insistent demand 
on the part of great numbers of people for a purer 
form of democracy, one in which there will be 
a larger degree of liberty and equality than any 
the world has ever seen. Does progress He in the 
direction of greater personal liberty and equahty? 
Is pure democracy a primitive or an advanced stage 
in social evolution? Is it the goal toward which 
the race is moving or merely a stage through which 
it is passing? 

There can be no doubt as to the direction in 
which all mankind is moving at present. At the 
close of the greatest war in history, a war which we 
fondly hoped was fought "to make the world safe 
for democracy," a tidal wave of democracy has 
covered the whole earth. The most ancient and 
powerful autocracies of Europe have gone down in 
the wreckage of the war and so-called democra- 



io6 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

cies have taken their place. The plaintive appeal of 
Carl of Austria to Ferdinand of Roumania, "We 
kings must stand together now," was a recognition, 
when too late, of the conquering forces of democracy 
which were released by the war. Democracy is 
taking possession of the world not merely in forms 
of government but also in the management of 
industry, the distribution of property, the purpose 
and character of education. It begins to appear 
that the world is not only safe for democracy, 
but that it is unsafe for anything else. 

Our passion for democracy has been with us a 
kind of religion; it has rested in the main upon 
instinct rather than reason, upon sentiment rather 
than science. No one of us would wish to disturb 
the firm foundations of our faith, which are laid 
in instincts and emotions, and yet it is our privi- 
lege and duty to give reasons for the faith that is in 
us and to examine the merits and demerits of our 
institutions in the light of knowledge and experi- 
ence. If democracy is to endure and prevail it 
must rest upon science as well as sentiment. Popu- 
lar approval or disapproval will not alter the course 
of nature and civil laws cannot abolish natural 
ones. 

In spite of the growth of democracy not a few 
thoughtful people are afraid of it and many would 
gladly see it limited still further in extent or appli- 
cation. Before the war there was apparent in 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 107 

this country a growing distrust of democracy, 
especially on the part of those who are somewhat 
removed from the ranks of the common people; 
during the war this distrust was more or less con- 
cealed, but now amid the social earthquakes which 
are shaking the world this feeling is greatly in- 
creased, and we are now witnessing such a conflict 
of opinion regarding universal democracy as the 
world has never before known. 

Distrust of democracy runs through the histories 
of all nations, ancient and modern. It was shown 
even by the founders of this greatest of democra- 
cies in the limitations which were placed upon 
citizenship and suffrage and in the many attempts 
which were made to guard the highest offices against 
popular interference, as, for example, in the consti- 
tutional provision for the election of the President 
by an electoral college, the election of senators by 
State legislatures, and the appointment of judges 
by the executive. It appears to-day in the conflicts 
between labor and capital, the opposition to wo- 
man's suffrage, the fear of popular control of educa- 
tion, and the alarm over the spread of socialism 
and internationalism throughout the world. 

Furthermore, this distrust is increased by the 
failures and short-comings of democracy in many 
countries where it is being tried, at least nominally. 
Alleyne Ireland,* in particular, has recently criti- 

* Journal of Heredity, Dec, 1918, and Nov., 1919. 



io8 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

cised the whole system of democracy not merely 
because of its faults and failures but also because 
of its fundamental principles, claiming that it 
substitutes the rule of ''ignorant masses" for that 
of intelligent leaders, and the "blind god of num- 
bers" for wisdom and experience. We hear much 
of the tyranny, inefficiency, ignorance, and cor- 
ruption of democracies and unfortunately much of 
this is only too true. Democracy is charged with 
being responsible for all these sins, whereas in many 
instances they are due to some of the worst types 
of autocracy which are merely shielding themselves 
under the name of democracy. We do not change 
the nature of anything by merely changing its 
name and an autocracy, oligarchy, or aristocracy 
that calls itself a democracy cannot be used to 
disprove the value of real democracy. 

Again many of the faults which are charged 
up against democracy such as emotionalism, irra- 
tionalism, blind partisanship, and selfishness are 
found under every other form of social organiza- 
tion and cannot properly be attributed to democ- 
racy but belong rather to human nature; the most 
that can be said of these is that democracy no more 
than other, systems has been able to eliminate 
them. 

No system of government lives up to its best 
ideals aoid no single system is universally adapted 
to all people. No doubt democracy operates best 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 109 

with those in whom superior intelligence is asso- 
ciated with high morality, in whom the love of 
freedom is associated with a compelling desire for 
social order and justice. No doubt it is generally 
better for parents to govern young children than 
to make them absolutely self-governing; no doubt 
people of superior intelligence and morality can 
govern primitive people more efficiently than they 
can govern themselves; no doubt a wise and benefi- 
cent autocracy can accomplish many desirable 
things which an ignorant and corrupt democracy 
cannot. The question which lies back of all this 
is, What is the ultimate purpose of government? 
In the case of children, is it not to bring them to a 
condition where they can wisely govern them- 
selves? Is the Ultimate purpose different in the 
case of primitive peoples, or of the masses in a 
democracy? Is not the ultimate aim of govern- 
ment the highest possible development of the 
individual, the nation, and the race? Is not the 
educative power of democracy its greatest virtue? 
These great problems of the hour should be 
viewed not only in the light of human history, but 
also in the long perspective of the history of living 
things upon the earth. Undoubtedly the funda- 
mental concepts of biology apply to man no less 
than to other organisms, but it must be admitted 
that the application of biological principles to 
specific problems of social organization is often of 



no EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

doubtful value. Thus we find that biological 
sanction has been claimed for wholly antagonistic 
opinions, as, for example, for and against war, 
communism, woman's suffrage, polygamy, etc. 
Those who are searching for biological analogies to 
support almost any preconceived theory in phil- 
osophy, sociology, education, or government can 
usually find them, for the living world is large 
and extraordinarily varied, and almost every possi- 
ble human condition has its parallel somewhere 
among lower organisms, where we find many kinds 
of degeneration as well as progress. 

This uncertainty and ambiguity in the applica- 
tion of biological principles to man and his insti- 
tutions, has brought this whole process of reasoning 
into disrepute among those who look upon man 
as a being who stands wholly outside the realm 
of biology, but in spite of the uncertainties of 
biological analogies when applied to minor phases 
and problems of human society, no one who has 
felt the force and sweep of the great doctrine of 
evolution, can doubt that biological principles 
underlie the physical, intellectual, and social evolu- 
tion of man — that biology is a torch-bearer not 
merely into the dark backgrounds of human his- 
tory, but also into the still more obscure regions 
of the future development of the race. 

The Declaration of Independence is, in many 
respects, the charter of our democracy. Adopted 
at a time when it was necessary to secure the ut- 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY iii 

most co-operation of the Colonies and of the world, 
it made its appeal directly to the social instincts, 
as well as to the intelligence of men, to their love 
of freedom, justice, and equality. The rights of 
man have ever been the foundation-stones of de- 
mocracy. The Declaration held " these truths to 
be self-evident; that all men are created equal; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights; that among these rights 
are life, Hberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
That to accomplish these purposes, governments 
are instituted among men, deriving all their just 
powers from the consent of the governed." Here 
are the foundation principles of democracy, which 
are summarized more concisely in the motto of 
France — "Liberty, EquaHty, Fraternity." 

What is the teaching of biology regarding these 
principles of democracy? How can we harmonize 
individual liberty and social organization, demo- 
cratic equality and hereditary inequality, universal 
fraternity, and national and class hostility? Or 
to put the question in a more practical form — 
How can we develop social organization in spite of 
individual liberty, democratic equality in spite of 
hereditary inequality, universal fraternity in spite 
of national and class antagonisms ? These are great 
problems, and the student of animal organization 
and evolution can do no more than to offer a few 
biological suggestions as to their solution. 



IV 



PERSONAL LIBERTY VS. SOCIAL 
ORGANIZATION 

With the growth of intelligence among animals 
and men, responses to external stimuli and to 
internal instincts become less immediate and 
direct; memories of past experiences come in to 
modify or inhibit instinctive responses, and these 
responses are no longer as fixed and mechanical 
as when instinct acts alone. There thus arises 
a certain amount of freedom in behavior; such 
freedom is never complete, and is always directly 
proportional to the degree of intelligence involved, 
and inversely proportional to the strength of the 
instincts. The more intelligence one has, the 
greater is his freedom from purely instinctive acts, 
but man is never wholly free from the influence of 
instincts; the greater his rational and volitional 
powers, the more complete is his self-determina- 
tion, but man is never entirely emancipated from 
external compulsions of his physical and social 
environment. 

The birth and growth of freedom in man has 
led to many conflicts between instinct and reason, 
between personal desires and the social welfare. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 113 

Such conflicts are lacking among individual cells 
and other constituent parts of the body — as such 
fables as that of "the belly and the members" 
plainly imply. The perfect integration of the parts 
of an organism is the result of organic contact, 
especially through the nervous system, of chemical 
messengers or hormones which pass from one part 
to another, and of simple reflexes or tropisms. 
In societies such as those of ants and bees, the 
integrating factors are complex reflexes, or chains 
of reflexes, which are known as instincts. There 
is here so little intelligence and freedom that in- 
stinct is the only ruler and harmony is complete. 
As Huxley says: ''Each bee has its duties and none 
has its rights." The incompleteness of integration, 
co-operation, and harmony in human society is 
due to the fact that imperfect intelligence and 
freedom have come in to interfere with instinct. 
Disharmony in ourselves, and in society, is the 
price we pay for personal intelligence and freedom. 
The history of mankind has been one long struggle 
for freedom — freedom not only from the control 
of irrational instincts, but also and chiefly from the 
compulsion of outside forces and of other persons. 
The eternal struggle against unfavorable environ- 
ment, and for the conquest of nature, the battles 
for personal freedom in thought, speech, and act, 
and for social freedom in religion, government, 
and industry, are among the noblest aspirations of 



IJ4 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

man. The struggle to be free is part of a great 
evolutionary movement, and yet in any society 
individual freedom must be limited in the interest 
of the common good, and the larger and more 
complex the society, the greater mu^t be these 
Hmitations. Here, as elsewhere, hfe and evolu- 
tion are balanced between opposing principles. 
Should the human ideal be individual freedom or 
social co-operation, liberty or duty, individualism 
or socialism ? It may be granted at once, that both 
of these alternatives are desirable, and to a certain 
extent attainable, but where one must be sacrificed 
for the other, which should it be? Is the ideal 
state one in which the social bond is as loose as 
possible and individual freedom is the chief aim, or 
is it one in which the bond is as close as possible, 
and the good of the nation or race or species is 
the supreme object? 

There can be no question as to the biological 
answer. The whole course of evolution from 
amoeba to man is marked by increasing differen- 
tiation and integration of the constituent parts of 
the organism; the whole course of development 
from the egg to the adult is a series of progressive 
differentiations and integrations of the constitu- 
ent cells; the most essential feature of biological 
progress consists in the Subordination of minor 
units to the larger units o^ organization. In the 
relations of organisms to | one another, nature 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 115 

invariably sacrifices the individual, if it be neces- 
sary, for the good of the colony or race or species. 
Race preservation and evolution is the supreme 
good and all considerations of the individual are 
subordinate to this end. 

Is it possible that the same rule of progress which 
appHes all along the way from amoeba to man 
is set aside when we come to human society? 
Does democracy, as contrasted with autocracy 
or aristocracy, mean greater freedom for the indi- 
vidual and a looser social organization ? If it does 
it would seem, from a biological point of view, 
to be doomed to retrogression or extinction, for 
it would represent a return toward the protozoan 
condition, a process of disorganization and devolu- 
tion rather than of progressive organization and 
evolution. 

Undoubtedly the usual conception of demo- 
cratic freedom does involve just this idea of maxi- 
mal individual freedom and minimal social control, 
but individualism is not a necessary part of democ- 
racy, and, when carried to extremes, it ends in 
anarchy. In this country we still cling to the ideals 
of a pioneer society in which there is little speciali- 
zation and co-operation, and great personal free- 
dom; indeed, to many persons such a condition 
seems the best possible one and the only one con- 
sistent with democracy. Such ideals represent a 
primitive and not an advanced stage in social 



Ii6 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

evolution. As a people we exalt freedom above 
service. Liberty is our national deity; her image 
is stamped on our money, her colossal figure is 
the first to greet the stranger from other lands. 
America is above all else the "sweet land of 
liberty." 

And yet a change in our conception of liberty 
has been coming over the nation; we are finding 
that the pioneer ideals of personal liberty and 
independence are incompatible with the require- 
ments of a populous country and a well organized 
society. We still preserve the ancient formulas, 
but their content is changing and must continue 
to change as society develops. Personal freedom 
must be subordinated more and more to social 
freedom, and pioneer society must give place to 
the more highly organized state in which increasing 
specialization and co-operation are the companion 
principles of progress. 

Lack of specialization is said to be one of the 
fatal faults of democracy. Mr. Ireland says* 
that in all other affairs of life we demand special- 
ists, but "in government we are asked to submit 
expert control to the inexpert." So far as our 
particular democracy is concerned, it must be 
admitted that too often this charge is true. Our 
lack of specialization is reflected in our contempt 
for specialists and experts of every sort. The belief 

* Loc. cit. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 117 

is wide-spread that one man's opinion is as good as 
another's, and that expert knowledge is merely 
another way of fooling the people. 

Every year our State legislatures are flooded 
with bills against vaccination and animal experi- 
mentation, introduced by provincial Solons who 
firmly believe that they know more about these 
subjects than men who have devoted their lives 
to them. We intrust education to those who can 
find no other occupation and who can scarcely 
manage to keep one lesson ahead of their classes, 
apparently with the idea that any one can teach. 
We leave the control of food, fuel, clothing, and 
other necessaries of life to speculators and dirty 
middlemen, and the health, happiness, and employ- 
ment of the people to Providence or to selfish 
exploiters. In a democracy where "every citizen 
is a king" we assume that statesmanship comes 
by nature; almost every citizen thinks that he 
could solve complex problems of government, 
ranging all the way from parochial affairs to inter- 
national relations, better than those who have 
devoted years of study to them. We elect dema- 
gogues and grafters to political office so frequently 
that the very name "politician" has come to be 
a reproach. We send narrow partisans to Congress, 
and, by stupid adherence to party regularity, men 
wholly untrained in statesmanship are frequently 
put into the most important public places. It 



ii8 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

is generally assumed that appointive positions will 
go to men who have been successful in winning 
votes, and positions requiring great technical 
knowledge are often filled by political figureheads 
with the suggestion that subordinates can do the 
work. 

This lack of specialization is seen also in our 
systems of education. Nature gives us many types 
of individuals, there is abundant opportunity for 
specialization, but we do our best by education to 
eradicate these differences and to make all citizens 
alike. Regardless of inherited capacities or in- 
tended occupations, we attempt to fit all persons 
to the same Procrustean bed. The argument 
has been advanced against woman's suffrage that 
women are different from men, as if all citizens in 
the state, all cells in the body, should be exactly 
ahke. There is arising a new demand for educa- 
tion for service, for training for efficiency, and this 
demand is sure to increase. Many kinds of citi- 
zens are needed to make up a nation, and many 
kinds of education are needed for many kinds of 
service. How preposterous it is that boys and 
girls, laborers and scholars, farmers and merchants 
should receive identical training for their varied 
services to society. And yet the aim in this has 
been a good one; namely, to bring about social 
unity and harmony. Again we stand between 
opposing forces, again we sail the narrow sea be- 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 119 

tween the Scylla of no specialization and the 
Charybdis of no co-operation. 

These are serious defects in our social system, and 
they must be reformed if we are to make progress, 
or even to hold our present position; but it should 
not be forgotten that as a nation we have only 
recently emerged from a pioneer condition in which 
there was little specialization and co-operation, and 
as a people we are rapidly becoming more highly 
specialized without becoming less democratic. 

Lack of speciaHzation is no essential part of 
democracy. Specialists in all fields of human ac- 
tivity are developed in democracies no less than 
in other forms of government, and if in selecting 
men for public office we still retain some of our 
pioneer ideals, this phase of our development is 
rapidly passing. No doubt we often make mistakes 
in choosing men for public positions, but do other 
forms of government avoid such mistakes? In a 
democracy these mistakes may be quickly remedied ; 
when we become sufi&ciently aroused, '^we turn the 
rascals out," but it is more difficult to get rid of a 
corrupt or incompetent autocrat. 

Does democracy mean that every citizen knows 
how to govern the country, or wage war, or con- 
clude peace, or develop industry, or conserve the 
public health, or do a thousand other things which 
are necessary in a modern state? Certainly not; 
ideal democracy means not less specialization, but 



I20 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

fuller co-operation than in other forms of govern- 
ment. In science, medicine, education, commerce, 
industry, agriculture, and innumerable other fields, 
we must have specialists, and the same is true of 
the various functions of government. The war has 
done us a great service in awakening us to this 
fact and it will be a crime against civilization and 
progress if we allow the nation to settle back once 
more into the conditions which prevailed before 
the war. 

However, candid persons must recognize that 
there is abundant justification for the popular 
mistrust of certain types of experts. Sad experi- 
ence has demonstrated again and again that a man 
may know a great deal about some specialty and 
still show a lamentable lack of good judgment. 
Narrowness of outlook and intense specialization 
often make "learned fools." Specialization of this 
type is like overspecialization in physical evolu- 
tion, it leads to lack of balance and adjustment, 
and ultimately to elimination. 

Few nations have ever equalled the degree of 
specialization shown by the late Imperial German 
Government. All citizens, from the Emperor down 
to the common soldier, had undergone long train- 
ing for their special duties. And yet it is the general 
opinion of most people, including the Germans 
themselves, that few nations ever made more seri- 
ous blunders in policy, diplomacy, and even in 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 121 

military operations. These blunders were not in 
the technical execution of particular tasks, in 
which they were marvellously efficient, but rather 
in lack of broad judgment and common sense; 
inability to forecast the effects of " Schrecklich- 
keit," of unrestricted submarine warfare, of arro- 
gant and violent propaganda. All this is evidence 
of overspecialization with a corresponding lack of 
balance. 

We see many evidences of such overspecializa- 
tion in our own country — theologians who think 
they know the whole counsel of God but who have 
a very insufficient knowledge of human conditions 
and needs; educators who have elaborated mar- 
vellous theories but can never make them work; 
psychiatrists who can classify the entire popula- 
tion under certain types of neuroses or psychoses 
but who are themselves striking examples of lack 
of balance; speciahsts in science or medicine or 
law, whose overspecialization leads them into the 
greatest absurdities. And what are we to con- 
clude when specialists differ so fundamentally as do 
our greatest authorities in constitutional govern- 
ment and international law on the merits or de- 
merits of the League of Nations? The common 
people may not know much about this subject, 
but they cannot differ more widely than do the 
experts. 

However, out of all such confficts of opinion 



122 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

there is apt to come in time balance and poise, 
just as out of the struggle for physical existence 
there comes adjustment and adaptation. It is 
not without reason that we call those judgments 
which have been reached by multitudes of men as 
the result of "trial and error," and finally trial 
and success, "common sense," and recognize it 
as the highest type of practical judgment. 

Our lack of co-operation has been even more evi- 
dent than that of specialization. Insistence on 
personal freedom and on the rights of individuals 
has gone far toward weakening the bonds of union 
and destroying co-operation. The disharmonies of 
society, and the conflicts of interests and minds and 
purposes, have come largely from the exalting of 
individual rights over social obligations. We need 
a new Revolution which will enforce the duties of 
man, as our former Revolution emphasized the 
rights of man. How easily the disharmonies of 
society could be silenced, and the conflicts between 
individuals and classes and nations could be settled, 
if men were taught to think more of their duties 
and less of their rights. Unquestionably the fur- 
ther evolution of society must lie in the direction 
of greater co-operation, and any system of organi- 
zation which exalts individual freedom to the detri- 
ment of social union and harmony must go under 
in the struggle for existence. 

These very serious defects in our social organiza- 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 123 

tion are not so much the results of democracy 
as of the character, education, and condition of 
the people; the perfection or imperfection of the 
social system is a reflection of the popular intelli- 
gence and moraHty. Ignorant and selfish ideals of 
democracy, or of any other social system, may lead 
astray whole nations and generations, but democ- 
racy itself is not responsible for the ignorance, 
selfishness, and hate which exist in the world; 
rather, these evils have been greatly intensified by 
the lack of genuine democracy. 

The greatest problem which confronts all types 
of government is the problem of social co-operation. 
It was the failure of co-operation rather than of 
speciaHzation which led to the downfall of almost 
every great civilization of the past, and it is this 
danger especially which confronts the modern 
world. With the increasing size of social units, 
speciaHzation does, to a considerable extent, take 
care of itself, but co-operation under these condi- 
tions tends to grow weaker. Efi&cient co-operation 
may, for a time, be forced upon a people by a power- 
ful autocracy, but history has generally shown 
that such a course ends in class antagonisms and 
the destruction of social union. Self-government 
and majority rule are generally recognized as the 
best form of government for intelligent people; 
a paternal form of government may be better 
suited to ignorant and undeveloped races, but only 



124 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

with the understanding that the ultimate purpose 
of government is the development of the gov- 
erned, and that the end and aim of social evolution 
is co-operation without compulsion. A genuine 
democracy seeks and obtains a degree of co-opera- 
tion which compulsion can never obtain. 

False ideals of democratic liberty and equality 
have done, and are still doing, vast harm in the 
world. It is the duty of all who love democracy to 
resist these false ideals and to promote those which 
are consistent with social progress. Real democratic 
freedom is not the freedom of isolation, nor of 
anarchy; the liberty for which the peoples of the 
world are fighting and dying is not the liberty of 
a Robinson Crusoe who is ''monarch of all he sur- 
veys," nor yet the lawlessness of anarchy and revo- 
lution; it is not freedom to plunder or oppress or 
dominate others, but the freedom of fellowship, 
common service, and mutual esteem; not freedom 
from general social control, but freedom from the 
tyranny of selfish individuals and classes. Normal 
human beings do not desire a kind of freedom like 
that of cancer cells, for example, which run riot 
without regard to the welfare of the organism, 
but rather a freedom like that of the normal cells 
of the body, each of which is a unit, preserving its 
own individuality, and to a certain extent its own 
independence, and free to do the work for which it 
is fitted under the control of the body as a whole. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 125 

Men do not desire a freedom like that of the soli- 
tary wasp, which lives and works alone, but rather 
a freedom like that of ants or bees in a colony 
where each individual is free to serve as best it can 
under the control of the colony as a whole, or of 
what Maeterlinck calls, "the spirit of the hive." 
It is a mistake to ascribe monarchical or class ideals 
drawn from human society to the ant or bee colony. 
The so-called "kings," "queens," "soldiers," and 
"workers" are in no sense rulers or subjects or 
favored classes. Each does "what seems good in 
his sight," namely the work which it is fitted by 
nature to do, and there is no ruler but instinct; 
each shares in common prosperity and hardships, 
and is esteemed according to its capacity to serve 
the common good. Democracy can offer, and 
normal human beings can desire, no other freedom 
for the individual than this — based however on 
reason and ethics rather than upon tropisms and 
instincts. 

But there is a vastly larger and more important 
freedom which democracy brings to society as a 
whole. The freedom of the individual man is to 
that of society as the freedom of a single cell is to 
that of the human being. It is this larger freedom of 
society, rather than the freedom of the individual, 
which democracy offers to the world; free socie- 
ties, free states, free nations rather than absolutely 
free individuals. In all organisms, and in all social 



126 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

organizations, the freedom of the minor units must 
be limited in order that the larger unit may achieve 
a new and greater freedom; and in social evolution 
the freedom of individuals must be merged more 
and more into the larger freedom of society. The 
liberty which we worship is not, or at least should 
not be, that of the individual, but rather that of 
society as a whole — the freedom of nations and 
races rather than that of individuals, the seK- 
determination of peoples rather than of persons. 
This is the biological ideal of freedom, and it should 
also be the democratic ideal. 



V 

DEMOCRATIC EQUALITY VS. 
HEREDITARY INEQUALITY 

Equality is one of the most important factors 
in producing social harmony. It is the dearest 
one of the democratic graces. 'And now abideth 
Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, but the greatest of 
these is Equality.' The creed of democracy has 
generally been that all men are created equal, 
and that the inequalities which exist are due to 
environment, education, or opportunity. 

And yet nothing is more evident than the ine- 
qualities of personality, intelligence, usefulness, 
and influence; and the inequahties of heredity 
are greater even than those of environment. Re- 
cent work on development and evolution shows that 
the influence of environment is relatively slight, 
that of heredity overwhelming. Not only poets, 
but also scholars, statesmen, leaders, and laborers 
are born and not made. Hereditary inequahty 
has always been the strong fortress of aristocracy, 
and scientific studies of heredity seem on first 
thought to support the contentions of aristocracy 
in this respect rather than those of democracy. 

How shall we harmonize the teachings of biology 

with those of democracy; the proven inequalities 

127 



128 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

of heredity with the assumed equaUty of man? 
Shall we revise our ideas of heredity, or of democ- 
racy? I have sometimes been asked: "Do you 
believe in heredity; how then can you believe in 
democracy? Do you believe in equality; how 
then can you believe in heredity?" 

Aristocracy is founded upon an obsolete idea of 
heredity, namely the "law of entail." It confuses 
social and biological inheritance. A son may in- 
herit the property of his father but not his per- 
sonality ; under the law of primogeniture the oldest 
son inherits the kingdom, titles, privileges of his 
father in their entirety, but not his intelligence, 
character, and personality. In natural or biologi- 
cal inheritance the germinal causes of the traits of 
the parents are separated and are redistributed to 
their offspring so that the latter are "mosaics" 
of ancestral traits. These germinal causes of traits, 
which are called genes, are transmitted unchanged, 
but in the fertilization of the egg one-half of the 
genes from each parent is lost and is replaced by 
half from the other parent. So numerous are these 
genes that the combinations of them in the off- 
spring are rarely, if ever, the same in two indi- 
viduals, and so complex is their influence upon 
one another and upon the process of development, 
that no two sexually produced individuals are ever 
exactly alike. Consequently the best traits may 
appear in parents and be lost in their offspring; 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 129 

genius in an ancestor, may be replaced by incompe- 
tence, imbecility, or insanity in a descendant. As 
each generation must start life anew from the germ 
cells, so in every person there is a new distribution 
of hereditary factors or genes. Every person has a 
new hereditary deal, if not always a square one. 

Owing to the fact that some traits, or rather 
their genes, are dominant and others recessive, 
certain of the latter may be carried along for sev- 
eral generations in a latent condition only to appear 
in some later offspring in which the dominant gene 
is not present. Feeble-mindedness, for example, 
is a recessive character, and East has calculated 
that it is present in a recessive form in one person 
out of fourteen of the entire population of this 
country, but it does not actually appear unless two 
of these recessive genes come together in a ferti- 
lized egg. On the other hand, feeble-mindedness 
and other recessive characters become latent when 
mated with normal and dominant characters. 
The later history of the famous, or rather infamous, 
"Jukes family" shows that many of the descen- 
dants are normal and useful citizens probably be- 
cause their parents married into normal families. 

This is the great law of heredity discovered by 
Mendel, and it differs fundamentally from the law 
of entail. Property may be entailed, but not per- 
sonality; titles and privileges, but not character 
and ability. With the law of entail in mind, it is 



I30 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

not surprising that strict hereditarians should have 
questioned the reputed parentage of Jesus, or Shake- 
speare, or Lincoln, or that lovers of democracy 
should have refused to believe in this kind of he- 
redity; but the law of entail is of man's making, 
while, so far as we know, the law of Mendel is 
the only law of natural inheritance. 

Think of the great men of unknown lineage, and 
the unknown men of great lineage; think of the 
close relationship of all persons of the same race; 
of the wide distribution of good and bad traits in 
the whole population; of incompetence and even 
feeble-mindedness in great families, and of genius 
and greatness in unknown families, and say whether 
natural inheritance supports the claims of aristoc- 
racy or of democracy. 

When we remember that most of the great lead- 
ers of mankind came of humble parents; that many 
of the greatest geniuses had the most lowly origin; 
that Shakespeare was the son of a bankrupt butcher 
and an ignorant woman who could not write her 
name, that as a youth he is said to have been 
known more for poaching than for scholarship, and 
that his acquaintance with the London theatres be- 
gan by his holding horses for their patrons; that 
Beethoven's mother was a consumptive, the daugh- 
ter of a cook, and his father a confirmed drunkard; 
that Schubert's father was a peasant by birth and 
his mother a domestic servant; that Faraday, per- 
haps the greatest scientific discoverer of any age. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 131 

was born over a stable, his father a poor sick black- 
smith, his mother an ignorant drudge, and his only 
education obtained in selling newspapers on the 
streets of London and later in working as appren- 
tice to a bookbinder; that the great Pasteur was 
the son of a tanner; that Lincoln's parents were 
accounted ''poor white trash" and his early sur- 
roundings and education most unpromising; and 
so on through the long list of names in which 
democracy glories — when we remember these we 
may well ask whether aristocracy can show a better 
record. The law of entail is aristocratic, but the 
law of Mendel is democratic. 

Quaint old Thomas Fuller wrote many years ago 
in his ''Scripture Observations," 

"I find, Lord, the genealogy of my Saviour strangely 
checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate 
generations : — 

1. Roboam begat Abia, that is a bad father a bad son. 

2. Abia begat Asa, that is a bad father a good son. 

3. Asa begat Josaphat, that is a good father a good son. 

4. Josaphat begat Joram, that is a good father a bad son. 
I can see, Lord, from hence that my father's piety cannot 

be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that 
actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news 
for my son." 

It may be objected that I have ended by deny- 
ing that there is any inheritance, at least so far as 
intellectual and social quahties are concerned, but 
this is not the case. While it is true that good and 
bad hereditary traits are widely jdistributed among 



132 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

all classes and conditions of men, they are not 
equally distributed. On the contrary the chances of 
good or bad traits appearing in offspring are much 
higher in some families than in others, but no family 
has a monopoly of good or bad traits, and no social 
system can afford to ignore the great personages 
that appear in obscure families, or to exalt nonenti- 
ties to leadership because they belong to great 
families. In short, preferment and distinction 
should depend upon individual worth and not upon 
family name or position. This is orthodox demo- 
cratic doctrine, but not the faith or practice of 
aristocracy. 

Finally democratic equality does not now mean, 
and has never in the past meant, that all men are 
equal in personality. It is not a denial of personal 
inequalities, but is the only genuine recognition of 
them. On the other hand, rigid family and class 
distinctions are denials of individual distinctions. 
Democratic equality does not mean equality of 
heredity, environment, education, or possessions; 
least of all does it mean equality of intelligence, 
usefulness, or influence. 

It does mean equality before the law, equal 
justice for all, no special privileges due merely to 
birth, freedom to find one's work and place in 
society. In short it means that every man shall be 
measured by his own merits, and not by the merits 
of some ancestor whose good traits may have 
passed to a collateral line. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 133 

Democracy alone permits a natural classification 
of men with respect to social value, as contrasted 
with all artificial and conventional classifications. 
It contributes more than any other system of 
government to the contentment, happiness, sta- 
bility, and peace of a nation. It brings a message 
of justice, and hope, and inspiration to people in 
all walks of life. It inspires the youth of a land 
with visions and living examples of 

"... Some divinely gifted man 
Whose life in low estate began 
And on a simple village green; 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 
And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance 

And grapples with his evil star; 

And moving up from high to higher, 
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 

The centre of a world's desire." 

This was the passion which fired the souls of our 
fathers and led them to establish this great Repub- 
lic, and this is the power and inspiration which recall 
us at this great crisis in the history of the world 
from our artificial aristocracies, and plutocracies, 
and class distinctions to a genuine democracy. 



VI 



UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY VS. NATIONAL 
AND CLASS ANTAGONISMS 

Evolution shows that we are all cousins if not 
brothers. The lines of descent from innumerable 
ancestors converge in us, and will radiate from us 
to innumerable descendants. Genealogists picture 
descent as a tree in which the trunk represents 
some single ancestor and the branches all of his 
descendants, but such a representation is wholly 
at variance with biological facts because in sexual 
reproduction every person has two parents. The 
"genealogical tree" is the result of an attempt to 
trace descent back to some one distinguished 
ancestor while ignoring all others. The various 
branches of a family do not trace back to a single 
trunk, but rather to an increasing number of 
branches. A graphic representation of descent 
is not a tree but a net in which every individual is 
represented by a knot formed by the union of two 
lines which may be traced backward and forward 
to an ever-increasing number of knots and lines 
until all are united in this vast genealogical net of 
humanity. If the number of our ancestors doubled 
in each ascending generation, as it would do if 

134 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 135 

the marriage of cousins of various degrees did not 
take place, each of us would be descended from 
more than a billion ancestors of a thousand years 
ago, let us say in the reign of William the Conqueror. 
Even allowing for numerous intermarriages of 
relatives it is highly probable that all people of 
English or French or German stock are descended 
from common ancestors of a thousand years ago. 

A book * has been pubHshed recently in which 
several of our Presidents, heads of universities, 
and captains of industry and finance are shown to 
be descended from Charlemagne. This distinction 
is one which they share with probably more than 
half of the citizens of this Republic. Einhard, 
the contemporary biographer of Charlemagne, 
says that he had nine wives, besides many concu- 
bines, and although he was fond of his children he 
never knew how many he had. If it were possible 
to trace our genealogies far enough into the past 
and through all their ramifications it would be 
found that all of us are literally descendants of 
royalty, of Alfred and Charlemagne and William 
the Conqueror and of any and every other person 
of one thousand or more years ago who left many 
descendants — including nonentities and worse; we 
hunt up our noble ancestors and forget the others. 

John G. Saxe, formerly known as the poet of 
democracy, once wrote: 

* Browning, Charles R. "Americans of Royal Descent." 



136 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

"Depend upon it, my snobbish friend, 
Your family line you can't ascend 
Without good reason to apprehend 
You'll find it waxed at the farther end 
By some plebeian vocation. 
Or, worse than that, your boasted line 
May end in a loop of stronger twine, 
The plague of some worthy relation." 

But while our lines of descent lead back to practi- 
cally all people of the same race and country of a 
thousand or more years ago, we have inherited our 
traits of character from only a very small number 
of these ancestors. It is known that inheritance 
passes from one generation to the next in the germ 
cells, and more specifically in the chromosomes or 
deeply staining threads found in the nuclei of 
those cells. 

The number of chromosomes is constant for 
every species, and typically each chromosome has 
come down in unbroken lineage from previous 
generations. But in the formation of the germ 
cells one-half of the specific number is thrown away 
and when egg and sperm unite the specific number 
is again restored. 

In man there are probably forty-eight chromo- 
somes, twenty-four from the father and twenty- 
four from the mother; but these are usually de- 
rived in unequal numbers from the four grand- 
parents; for example, sixteen may come from the 
paternal grandfather and eight from the paternal 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 137 

grandmother, four from the maternal grandfather 
and twenty from the maternal grandmother, or the 
number which comes from each grandparent may 
vary all the way from twenty-four to naught. 
One or more of the eight great-grandparents may 
have furnished no chromosomes and no inherited 
traits to the great-grandchild, and finally no one 
in the world can inherit chromosomes (or traits) 
from more than forty-eight contemporary ancestors, 
assuming that the chromosomes preserve their 
identity, since no one has more than forty-eight 
chromosomes. Consequently, although each of us 
has had thousands of ancestors, he has had only a 
small number of transmitters.* Many a person 
bears the name of some distinguished ancestor but 
does not have a single one of his chromosomes or 
hereditary traits, whereas others who do not bear 
his name, and are usually reckoned as collateral 
descendants, have received his chromosomes and 
are his true inheritors. 

There has been much foolish talk and loose 
thinking regarding old families and length of de- 
scent. As Tennyson says: 

"The gardener Adam and his wife / 

Smile at the claims of long descent." 

In length of descent we are all equal, and in com- 

* I am indebted to my colleagues, Dean West and Professor 
Abbott, for suggesting this word to indicate those ancestors from 
whom chromosomes and hereditary traits are derived. 



138 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

munity of descent we are all cousins if not brothers. 
Our lines stretch out to all our race. Each individ- 
ual or family is not a separate and independent 
entity, but merely a minor unit in the great organ- 
ism of mankind. Biology and the Bible agree that 
"God hath made of one blood all nations of men." 
There are no really pure lines of human descent, 
and few isolated stocks, and these owe their origin 
to geographical isolation rather than to anything 
else. There has been, and still is, abundant inter- 
breeding among all minor varieties and races of 
men, and as a result mankind is a hopelessly mon- 
grel species. Indeed, in this respect man is like 
any other wide-ranging species. He has no such 
claim to ancestral purity as has any pure breed 
of domesticated animals and plants. Man is indeed 
a wild species and cannot be domesticated because 
there is no one to domesticate him. 

As a result of this common descent the resem- 
blances between all types of men are vastly more 
numerous and important than the differences. 
This fact is especially evident to the biologist, for 
even the types which differ most widely, such as 
the white, yellow, and black races, are evidently 
only varieties or subspecies of Homo sapiens, 
while no other existing creature can be placed in 
the same zoological genus or family with man. 
When I reflect upon the resemblances between all 
men and the differences which separate man from 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 139 

all other animals, I think I can understand the 
words of a prayer which I used to hear when I 
was a boy: "We thank thee. Lord, that thou hast 
made us men." 

Nevertheless, in spite of this universal brother- 
hood of man, racial, varietal, national, and class 
antagonisms have arisen everywhere and have often 
led to terrible hostilities. Racial and varietal differ- 
ences represent a natural classification based upon 
physical characteristics. There are also undoubt- 
edly intellectual and social differences between 
these major subdivisions of the species, which tend 
to cause a natural and desirable social segrega- 
tion of races, but while our instincts lead to such 
segregation they do not lead to nor justify racial 
antagonisms. The fundamental instincts of all 
types of men are so essentially similar that all may, 
and often do, live together harmoniously; and the 
co-operation of all types of men in organized society 
is so much a matter of education and environment 
that it has been demonstrated again and again, 
and nowhere better than in this country, that 
persons of the most distinct races may have the 
same social ideals and may co-operate in mutual 
helpfulness in the realization of those ideals. 

When we come to those minor subdivisions 
represented by the so-called races of Europe, 
the natural distinctions are usually so slight that 
they form no barrier to the most intimate associa- 



I40 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

tion and co-operation. Most Americans represent 
mixtures of English, French, German, Scandina- 
vian, and other European stocks and we generally 
think that the result is good, not only physically 
but also intellectually and socially. The inherent 
antagonisms between these stocks that agitators 
and designing politicians tell us about are really 
not inherent at all, but are largely created, culti- 
vated, and magnified by hostile words and deeds 
for national and selfish purposes. 

Race antagonism is almost always the outgrowth 
of ignorance and bigotry, and it is never judicial 
or scientific. It is easy to hate and despise people 
whom you do not know ; perhaps this is a survival 
of an ancient instinct to repel foreigners. On the 
other hand, knowledge usually brings sympathy; 
"To know all is to pardon all." In any event a 
scientific study of different races reveals much that 
is admirable and praiseworthy in each, and all who 
love the truth will welcome the movement for race- 
appreciation begun by scientists and philanthro- 
pists in different parts of the world.* 

As race antagonisms are generally the result of 
bad education, so they may be overcome by good 
training. Hope for the peace and progress of the 
world must rest largely upon the general cultiva- 
tion of a spirit of tolerance and sympathy for other 
groups than our own, a realization of the fact 

* Means, P. A. "Racial Factors in Democracy," Boston, 1919. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 141 

that good as well as bad qualities are found in all 
classes, nations, and races, and a spirit of justice 
that is willing to recognize and reward good quali- 
ties wherever they may be found. 

The splendid ideals of personal service and sacri- 
fice, and of national and international co-operation, 
which attended the World War have now largely 
passed away and a spirit of antagonism between 
classes, nations, races, and even religions has 
spread over the world. Bigotry has taken the place 
of sympathy, selfishness of service. This is partly 
due to a natural reaction from an unaccustomed 
idealism, but in part it is the result of ihe de- 
liberate efforts of narrow-minded leaders to cul- 
tivate what they euphemistically call class and 
race consciousness, nationalism, and patriotism, but 
what in reality are class and race hatreds and 
national arrogance. The very men who are now 
preaching "America first" were recently damning 
those who sang "Deutschland iiber AUes." They 
are now counselling national selfishness, but at the 
same time are loud in their condemnation of labor 
unions and Soviets that are showing a similar 
spirit of narrowness. 

There is only one cure for this sickness of society, 
this failure of the democratic ideal of fraternity, 
and that is education — the cultivation of reason 
instead of passion, of co-operation in place of 
antagonism, of humanity rather than nationalism. 



142 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

Unless these centrifugal tendencies can be over- 
come, they will surely lead to the destruction of 
our civilization. 

But even the end of our civilization need not 
mean, and probably would not mean, the end of all 
social evolution. Other civilizations would prob- 
ably arise on the ruins of ours as ours has succeeded 
many others. The teachings of biology and of 
human history indicate that further social progress 
must lie in the direction of the rational co-opera- 
tion of all mankind. Whether our civilization sur- 
vives or not, the probabilities are, that sometime 
these ideals of rational co-operation and of demo- 
cratic fraternity will prevail. 

Unfortunately for the present generation of men, 
social evolution has not yet advanced to the point 
where altruism is stronger than selfishness and 
where it is harder to stir up strife than to allay it. 
If those only who preach and practise selfishness 
were to fall victims to it and those only who take 
the sword were to perish by the sword, the elimina- 
tion of the antisocial would be more rapid. But 
although many innocent ones perish with the guilty, 
nevertheless social evolution is moving toward the 
elimination of the antisocial. Progress is often 
slow and there are many back currents, but the 
long view of social evolution and of human his- 
tory justifies the hope that there will come a time 
when altruism will be stronger than selfishness, 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 143 

and democratic fraternity, than national and class 
hostility. 

The biologist must look with concern upon the 
breaking up of European nations into minor inde- 
pendent units along lines of language, customs, or 
education, just as the intelligent American would 
deprecate the breaking up of his own country 
along similar lines. Biological and social progi;ess 
does not generally lie in that direction, as the course 
of evolution clearly shows. In so far as the differ- 
ences between peoples are due to environmental 
causes, they may be, to a great extent, removed. 
The most effective size of governmental units 
must vary with the possibilities of integration 
and co-operation of the constituent parts, and 
these possibilities are favored by homogeneity of 
race, language, and education, and by ease of inter- 
communication. All of these, except race, are 
environmental factors and are to a large extent 
subject to social control. 

Even when differences are so great that segre- 
gation is desirable, it is usually possible to unite 
these smaller units into a larger federation, as the 
history of this nation has demonstrated. Indeed 
this is the only democratic way of counteracting 
the social and national disintegration which is so 
imminent in parts of Europe to-day. With the 
greatly increased facilities for communication and 
education which exist in the modern world enor- 



144 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

mous national units of federated states are possible, 
including as in the case of the British Empire 
one-fourth or one-fifth of the entire human species 
under one general government, and it does not seem 
impossible that the greater part of the other three- 
fourths or four-fifths may yet be brought into 
some sort of federation. As the union of many 
cells into one body, the union of many persons into 
one colony, the union of many colonies into one 
nation have marked great advances in evolution 
so, let us hope, the union of many nations into the 
"Parliament of man, the Federation of the world" 
will mark the next great step in human progress. 

Finally, when we come to those minor class 
distinctions which are based only upon occupa- 
tion, wealth, or social position we have the most 
artificial and unnatural classification of all; and 
the antagonisms between these classes, which are 
engendered and fomented by designing agitators, 
are not only non-instinctive, but they are usually 
anti-instinctive and utterly irrational. This is not 
to say that men should not associate in congenial 
groups which have common interests and ideals; 
such associations are natural and inevitable; but 
when attempts are made to array one group or 
class against another and to make these classes 
permanent and hereditary, an artificial disharmony 
is introduced into society which can work only 
disastrously. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 145 

Hereditary social classes such as exist in many 
parts of Europe are the antithesis of democracy. 
That which is hereditary in such classes is not 
necessarily personal merit, but purely environ- 
mental advantages or disadvantages. Such arti- 
ficial distinctions largely ignore the natural abili- 
ties or disabilities of men and are fundamentally 
unjust and undemocratic. On the other hand, 
classes such as are found in schools, which are 
based upon personal merit, and in which every 
one is free to pass from due class to another de- 
pending upon his ability, are not only wholly 
democratic, but are absolutely necessary to a well- 
organized society. 

Means says: "The perfect democracy will be a 
state in which there will be classes absolutely 
rigid as to their functions for society but abso- 
lutely fluid as to the individuals who compose them. 
A man's or a woman's position in society will, in 
such a state, be determined by his or her peculiar 
aptitude and talents, not by hereditary position, 
nor by nepotism, nor by human authority, but 
solely by individual merit."* 

What could be more wasteful, absurd, and tragic 
than a system of artificial class distinctions which 
condemns low-born genius to the humblest work 
and puts well-born blockheads in exalted places? 
All persons enjoy most the work which they are 

*Loc. cit., p. 158. 



146 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

led to believe that they can do best, and that 
nation will be most contented and most efficient 
whose people are free to find the places in the 
social system for which they are best fitted. This 
is one of the strongest arguments against hereditary 
classes, and in favor of a genuine democracy — not 
that in such a democracy all men are equal, but 
that all are free from purely artificial restraints in 
finding their own levels. One of the most bene- 
ficial influences of the Great War, and of wars in 
general, is the breaking up of rigid class distinc- 
tions, the elimination of stupid lords and junkers 
and military officers, and the elevation of men of 
genius to exalted places, irrespective of birth or 
social position. 

Bateson, the English naturalist, has tentatively 
expressed the opinion that hereditary classes are 
desirable from the standpoint of eugenics, basing 
this opinion no doubt upon the fact that intellec- 
tual and social qualities are often, though, as he 
sadly admits, not always, characteristic of certain 
families. No doubt the best biological and social 
results would obtain if intermarriage occurred only 
between individuals of similar hereditary types. 
Such a segregation takes place naturally and 
normally where instinct and inclination are not 
interfered with by purely artificial restrictions and 
conventions. But even the oldest royal families, 
and much more our modern aristocracies and 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 147 

pseudo-aristocracies, are of such mixed lineage that 
their children vary greatly in ability, and it is 
contrary to instinct and to good breeding for a 
woman of talent to marry the stupid son of a 
distinguished family, or for a man of genius to 
marry a shallow-minded heiress. It would be good 
for society in general, and for its individual members 
in particular, if every person were free to find his 
or her proper level both in occupation and mar- 
riage, irrespective of family obscurity or pride. 
In democratic America we all rejoice when some 
divinely gifted rail-splitter becomes by his own 
merits the greatest figure of his generation, and 
we ought to rejoice, though of course regretfully, 
when the ungifted son of a railroad president finds 
his proper place working on the track, or when the 
low-minded heiress elopes with the coachman. 

When we turn from the more personal aspects 
of fixed social classes to their control of govern- 
ments and of pubHc affairs in general, we find that 
the evidence of their disruptive and antisocial 
influences are worst of all. The world has had 
experience of many kinds of exclusive class rule — 
absolute monarchy, aristocracy, middle class, and 
proletariat — and though some of these have proved 
better than others, they have all been bad, for they 
have endangered or destroyed social unity and 
harmony, and have ended sooner or later in dis- 
aster. Russia has recently gone from one of these 



148 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

extremes to the other, and the end of the tyranny 
of the proletariat cannot long be delayed. An 
autocracy or aristocracy may be progressive and 
efficient, but it is always dangerous, for no person 
or class is wise or good enough to rule other classes 
or persons without their participation or consent. 
Not only do governments derive all their just 
powers from the consent of the governed, but they 
derive their safety and stability from this source as 
well. What a demonstration have the greatest 
military autocracies of Europe furnished the world 
of their utter weakness and helplessness against an 
aroused people ! 

The strength and stabihty of democracies are 
proportional to their inclusiveness, their breadth 
of base, whereas autocracies are inverted pyramids. 
Equal universal suffrage and majority rule are the 
only self-regulating and self-preserving mechanisms 
which have been discovered as yet for harmoniz- 
ing conflicting interests in governments; they are 
the safety-valves of society. Theoretically, there 
is danger that majority rule may end in tyranny 
over minorities, but the social instincts of justice 
and fair play are wide-spread among men, and ex- 
perience has generally shown that in the long run 
majorities may be counted upon to be just to 
minorities that play fair. The more inteUigent 
members of society always have an immense ad- 
vantage over the more ignorant, and even in a 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 149 

genuine democracy the danger is not so much that 
ignorant and venal majorities may oppress the 
better elements in society, as that intelligent but 
unscrupulous minorities may exercise tyranny over 
the mass of the people in spite of their numbers. 

Majority rule would level society down to gen- 
eral mediocrity were it not for the instinct of the 
people to follow leaders. Modern democracy is 
not the rule of the people as a whole, of ignorant 
masses, of "the blind god of numbers." A democ- 
racy, no less than an autocracy, is a government by 
leaders, but in the former case these leaders are 
chosen by the people and are responsible to them 
and in the latter they are not. Leaders in a de- 
mocracy have great power, and in crises such as 
war, their powers may be temporarily greatly in- 
creased, but they are not autocrats, for they must 
render to the people an account of their steward- 
ship. In no modern form of government do the 
people as a whole make plans for war or peace, 
for taxation or legislation or even party platforms. 
These things are determined by leaders, and in 
general the mass of the people hold them responsi- 
ble only for results. Government, no less than per- 
sonal behavior, proceeds by the principle of "trial 
and error," and the majority in a democracy decide 
only whether the results are failures or successes. 
Furthermore a democracy is much more sensitive 
to this test than is any other form of government. 



I50 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

for a failure is quickly abandoned and its authors 
repudiated. The contrast between democracy and 
autocracy is not between "numbers and right- 
ness," but it is between rightness as measured by 
the effect upon the majority or on only a small 
minority of the people. 

This necessity for leaders emphasizes the im- 
portance of the individual in human society. In 
insect societies a single individual counts for Httle, 
except in the case of the queen, upon whom the 
reproduction of the colony depends. But in human 
•society progress, and even survival, depends upon 
capable leaders. A leader of incalculable value 
may be potential in a boy or girl of humblest birth. 
Society should see to it that every individual is 
given the chance to bring out the best that is in 
him. Hereditary castes of workers, soldiers, kings, 
and queens are well adapted to ant societies in 
which individual leadership counts for little, but 
they are fatal to the highest welfare of human 
society where individual leadership is all-impor- 
tant. 

One of the charges which has been brought 
against democracy is that it fails to develop capa- 
ble leaders. For example. Cram* says: '^Demo- 
cratic government for the last twenty-five years 
has neither desired nor created leaders of an intel- 

* Cram, Ralph Adams. "The Nemesis of Mediocrity," Boston, 
1917. 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 151 

lectual or moral capacity above that of the general 
mass of voters, and when by chance they appear 
they are abandoned for a type that is not of the 
numerical average but below it, and the standard 
has been lowering itself for a generation." 

Means* quotes this approvingly and points out 
that our people are showing a general decay of 
morals. He says he has seen, in a certain Eastern 
city, "young men and women, who had ancestors 
among that splendid group of men who signed the 
Declaration of Independence, acting like drunkards 
and prostitutes"; and he attributes this lower 
tone of morals to "the newcomers whose origin 
was in heaven knows what gutter." 

Every period has its Jeremiahs, who get joy and 
satisfaction from pointing out how much worse this 
degenerate age is than the "good old times" of 
the past. To some people the sunset of yesterday 
was much more beautiful than the sunrise of to- 
day, and this is especially true of those who never 
get up to see the sun rise. Is there not every reason 
to believe that coming generations will look upon 
Roosevelt and Wilson as this generation looks upon 
the great poHtical leaders of former times? And 
as to the moral degeneration of those descendants 
of the Signers, is it certain that the young blades 
of the Revolutionary period drank less alcohol and 
led more chaste lives than those of the present 

* Means, he. cit. 



152 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

day? And does it seem probable that these de- 
scendants of our first famihes were led astray by 
"gutter-born" immigrants, generally poor, ignorant 
and hard-working? 

Such condemnations of the present, as compared 
with the past, are not critical nor judicious. They 
are an expression of emotion rather than reason, 
of sentiment rather than evidence. They are 
characteristic of those who see in history a record 
of deterioration rather than of progress, who place 
the golden age in the distant past and engage in 
ancestor-worship. But the evidences of social and 
moral progress are all about us, and those who 
take the long view of human history will not mis- 
take marginal eddies for the main stream. 

The greatest danger that confronts democracy 
is not its lack of specialization, its slowness and in- 
efficiency, its levelling down to mediocrity, or its 
lack of capable leaders, but the fact that unscrupu- 
lous leaders may pervert and misdirect the normal 
social instincts of the people in order to accomplish 
selfish and partisan purposes. During the war 
there was a wide-spread and highly organized culti- 
vation of emotions of hate, suspicion, chauvinism. 
In some instances leaders, newspapers, and organi- 
zations did their best to work the people up to a 
frenzy, little realizing or caring how dangerous this 
process is. At present a similar propaganda is being 
waged against Japan and Mexico, and unless it 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 153 

can be met by reason and common sense it will in 
time get beyond peaceful bounds. It is this appeal 
of unscrupulous or ignorant leaders to primitive 
instincts and emotions rather than to reason which 
makes possible blind prejudice and hatred between 
classes and races and nations; it is this which 
provokes wars and destroys peace and progress. 

There are, so far as I can see, but two possible 
remedies for this most serious condition, and these 
are, first, that leaders shall always be honest and 
intelligent, a condition which we can probably 
never hope to attain, or, second, that the people as 
a whole shall be educated so as to appreciate the 
difference between evidence and emotion, science 
and sentiment. Sensationalism, emotionalism, irra- 
tionalism are the greatest dangers that threaten 
democracy and even civilization itself, for they are 
a direct return to barbarism, savagery, and pre- 
human conditions. Our most dangerous enemies 
are within and not without, and they are the 
forces of unreason. 

In the midst of such a revival of nationalism 
and patriotism as the world has rarely experienced, 
we ought not to forget that "above all nations is 
humanity," that love of man is more fundamental 
than love of country; that the only things that 
make patriotism glorious are service and sacrifice; 
that love of country means more than love of ''rocks 
and rills" and "templed hills," more even than 



154 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

love of forms of government; that it means in fact 
love of our fellow men, and that patriotism, social 
harmony, and the spirit of humanity are grounded 
upon democratic fraternity. 



CONCLUSION 

Can democracy save itself from the serious faults 
and dangers which threaten it? Can the people, 
as a whole, be trusted to choose wisely their lead- 
ers and policies? Can the democratic ideals of 
liberty, equality, and fraternity bring about that 
rational co-operation upon which the further prog- 
ress of society must depend? No man can now 
answer these questions with certainty, but at least 
it can be said that no other system of social or- 
ganization which has yet been tried holds so much 
promise of success. 

The rational powers of the masses of mankind 
are not very great, and if the success of democracy 
depended upon human reason alone the prospect 
would not be very encouraging. Although Lin- 
coln's saying is true that "You can fool all of the 
people some of the time, and some of the people 
all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people 
all of the time," nevertheless if a majority of the 
people can be fooled most of the time the outlook 
for future democracy would not be very bright, 
if progress depended solely upon the rational 
powers of mankind. 

But the firm foundations upon which democracy 
rests go deeper than the intellect and reason of 

155 



156 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

man; they go down to the instincts anc^ emotions 
and moral judgments which underlie all social 
evolution. Upon these foundations the rational 
organization of society stands as a splendid but 
still insecure superstructure. 

The moral judgments of men may be no better 
than their practical judgments, but judgment 
which is founded upon much experience, even if 
it be based on so low a level as "trial and error," 
is generally sound. Out of the conflict of opinions 
and ideals of multitudes of persons in all walks and 
circumstances of life there comes at last a compro- 
mise or adjustment which we call "common sense" 
and which has the pragmatic quality of viability. 

Although we cannot always trust the rational 
processes of the people as a whole, it is the creed of 
democracy that we can trust their social instincts 
and moral judgments. Their instincts of service 
and sympathy, and their judgments as to right and 
wrong, as to justice and injustice, are the bases upon 
which the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity 
rest. These instincts and judgments are so deep- 
seated and so wide-spread, that they form a firm 
foundation for democracy. 

All students of mankind have based their hopes 
of democracy upon these instincts and judgments, 
and no one has expressed this thought more force- 
fully than President Wilson. In his address at 
Independence Hall on July 4, 19 14, he said; "The 



EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 157 

way to success in this great country, with its fair 
judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of 
anybody except God and his final verdict. If I 
did not believe that, I would not believe in democ- 
racy. If I did not believe that, I would not believe 
that people can govern themselves. If I did not 
believe that the moral judgment would be the last 
judgment, the final judgment in the minds of men 
as well as the tribunal of God, I could not believe 
in popular government. But I do believe these 
things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the 
democracy, not only of America, but of every awak- 
ened people that wishes and intends to govern 
and control its own affairs." And in his address 
to the American Bar Association on October 20, 
1 9 14, he said: "You cannot go any faster than you 
can advance the average moral judgments of the 
mass; but you can go at least as fast as that, and 
you can see to it that you do not lag behind the 
average moral judgments of the mass. I have in 
my fife dealt with all sorts and conditions of men, 
and I have found that the flame of moral judgment 
burned just as bright in the man of humble life 
and limited experience as in the scholar and the 
man of affairs." Upon these instincts and judg- 
ments which are deeply planted in the nature and 
heart of humankind rest the present successes and 
the future hopes of democracy. 
These, then, are some of the reasons why we love 



158 EVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY 

democracy and are willing to defend it against the 
pretensions of autocracy: because it is the most 
natural and reasonable, because it is the most 
free and just, because it is the most humane and 
peaceful system of government which has yet been 
tried by man. 



Ill 

EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



I 

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 

Science contributes to society knowledge and 
power; government establishes order and justice; 
religion cultivates faith, hope, and love. The ap- 
peal of science is chiefly to reason, of government to 
action, of religion to emotion. The instincts and 
emotions of men are older and more powerful than 
their reason and correspondingly the appeal to 
emotion is more potent than the appeal to reason. 
Indeed, reason itself can be appealed to only 
through intellectual feeling or desire for truth. 
The highest types of religion appeal to the love 
of truth, of beauty, and of goodness, that is, to the 
noblest emotions in human nature. 

Ryland says: "Thoughtful people get too much 
in the habit of thinking that intellect is every- 
thing. Yet the world is governed not by thought 
but by emotion." And on this subject Ribot, the 
French psychologist, says: "What is fundamental 
in character is the instincts, impulses, desires, 
feelings, all these and nothing else." "Men are 
not governed by abstract principles," said Leslie 
Stephen, "but by passions and emotions." Her- 
bert Spencer said, "Mind is not wholly, or even 
mainly intelligence; it consists largely and in one 

i6i 



1 62 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

sense entirely of feelings"; and August Comte said: 
"Affections, propensities, passions are the great 
springs of human life." 

This is the great truth which religion has ever 
emphasized : out of the heart, that is, the emotions, 
are the issues of life (Prov. 4 : 20) ; As a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he (Prov. 23:7). This moral 
and emotional part of man's nature, as contrasted 
with his mind or intellect, is what is usually called 
the soul. 

In general instincts and feelings are as perfect in 
the higher orders of animals as in man; emotions 
and desires have an intellectual component and 
consequently are limited to the highest animals 
and are most highly developed in man; reason 
alone, that is, the power of generaHzation and, ab- 
stract thought, is wholly limited to man. 

A. Cosmic Mysteries 

Reason and consciousness have disclosed to man 
a vast and mysterious universe, in which there are 
stupendous forces and processes which he but dimly 
apprehends and the meaning and purpose of which 
he cannot understand. In this vast universe in- 
dividual men, the whole human race, the earth 
and solar system are but atoms and motes float- 
ing in infinite space. Generations, ages, eras come 
and go; living, feeling creatures rejoicing in their 
strength and fond of life swarm over the earth 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 163 

and go down to inevitable death and extinction, 
leaving only their skeletons as memorials of them; 
human beings, fearfully and wonderfully made, 
gifted with intelligence and reason, with the keen- 
est love of life, fear of death, and highest hopes 
and aspirations, appear by millions, rejoice and 
struggle and suffer for a brief period and then die 
and leave only their bones and implements behind. 
The inexorable system of nature seems to move on 
like a colossal Juggernaut, unheeding the victims 
that lie in its path. Complex forms of society — 
tribes and states and great empires — arise, flourish 
for a period, and then decay and disappear, leaving 
only vast monuments as evidences of their great- 
ness and pride and power. 

In the midst of this incomprehensible universe, 
in the presence of these illimitable powers and 
inexorable laws of nature, in the onrush of this 
universal holocaust puny man stands bewildered 
and wonders what it all means. 

B. The Problem of Evil 

Reason and consciousness have also revealed to 
man alone a vast problem of evil. Animals are 
not tortured with mental and moral suffering and 
they live chiefly in the present without fear as 
to the future or remorse for the past. Man on 
the other hand has eaten of the fruit of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil. He suffers 



1 64 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

not merely from physical pain but much more 
from mental and moral anguish. Through his 
memory, imagination, and reason he lives not mere- 
ly in the present, but also in the past and future. 
And although this larger life increases his joys it 
multiplies his woes. Burns has immortalized this 
difference between animals and men in his poem 
"To a Mouse": 

"Still thou art blest, compared wi' me! 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But, och ! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
And forward, though I canna see, 

I guess and fear." 

Who will say that those greatest and most dis- 
tinctive of human traits, reason and consciousness, 
have not been purchased at a fearful price ? They 
have revealed a world of evil as well as of good — 
a world of struggle and failure, of suffering and 
sorrow, of injustice and selfishness, of disappoint- 
ment and despair — a world of war and pesti- 
lence and death; a world in which the innocent 
suffer as well as the guilty, in which unborn babes 
suffer for the sins of their fathers, in which evil is 
often rewarded and good punished; a world in 
which nature is ''Red in tooth and claw with ra- 
vine," in which diseases and parasites of the most 
devilish ingenuity prey upon all Hving things, in 
which all higher animals are born in pain, brought 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 165 

up with measureless care and trouble, live a life 
in which struggle and suffering are mingled with 
brief satisfactions and joys, and without a single 
exception go on to inevitable decay and death. 

And as if these natural and unavoidable evils 
were not enough, man has taken what seems to be 
an almost infernal delight in perpetrating and 
imagining others. He has outdone the brutes in 
brutality and the beasts in bestiality. He has in- 
vented more cruel tortures and has imagined worse 
horrors than any known in nature. In his igno- 
rance and superstition he has peopled the world 
with demons, evil spirits, and witches, and he has 
extended these imaginary horrors to a future life 
of eternal torture. 

Is it any wonder that sensitive souls who have 
brooded over these horrors have cried out against 
them, that they have found this world of evil 
intolerable and have been compelled to seek some 
way of relief? 

C. The Inner Conflict 

Furthermore, we are aware of the fact that 
disharmony and evil are not only around us but 
in us. We are urged to different courses by con- 
flicting desires. Hate battles with love, selfishness 
with altruism, passion with reason. The moral 
and social codes forbid many things which we de- 
sire and prescribe things we would avoid. 



1 66 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

"Huxley held that the spirit of ethics was opposed to the 
spirit of evolution. Metchnikoff finds these disharmonies 
due to the survival of bestial instincts in man. Galton 
finds the sense of sin to be due to the fact that the develop- 
ment of our inherited nature has not kept pace with the 
development of our moral civilization. Our psychical, so- 
cial, and moral environment has come down to us from the 
past with ever-increasing increments, every age standing 
on the shoulders of the preceding one. The aspirations, 
impulses, responsibilities of modern life have become enor- 
mous and our inherited natures and abilities have not essen- 
tially improved. Social heredity has outrun germinal hered- 
ity and the intellectual, social, and moral responsibilities of 
our times are too great for many men. Civilization is a 
strenuous affair, with impulses and compulsions which are 
difiScult for the primitive man to fulfil, and many of us are 
hereditarily primitive men. The frequent result is dishar- 
mony, poor adjustment, a struggle between primitive in- 
stincts and high ideals with a resulting sense of discourage- 
ment and defeat, which often ends in abnormal states of 
mind. The prevalence of crime, alcoholism, depravity, and 
insanity is an ever-increasing protest and menace of weak 
men against high civilization." * 

In memorable words Paul describes the "law in 
my members warring against the law of my mind 
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin 
which is in my members," and he cries out: "Oh, 
wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me 
from this body of death?" (Romans 7:23, 24.) 

D. The Function of Relig^n 
All men everywhere have desired to be in har- 
mony with the superhuman powers and processes 

* Conklin. "Heredity and Environment," 1920, pp. 242-243. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 167 

which surround them; they have tried to avoid 
pain and evil and to find happiness; they have 
sought inner peace in place of conflict. In addi- 
tion to this, intelligent men have sought for a 
rational explanation of these great mysteries and 
problems which would satisfy their reason, and 
harmonize their emotions; which would make them 
feel at one with cosmic processes, with society, 
and with themselves. They have sought, in short, 
to adjust or adapt themselves to their environment 
whether it be the personal environment, inner or 
outer, or the cosmos. 

The most intelligent types of men may find 
relief from "Fightings within and fears without," 
in science or philosophy, but the great mass of 
mankind in all ages and countries have found re- 
lief in religion. Religion enables thoughtful and 
sensitive persons to face evil, fears, suffering, and 
death with hope and courage. It covers the hide- 
ous aspects of nature with the mantle of divine 
love and purpose. It makes life tolerable to those 
who would find it otherwise intolerable. It helps 
to control the antisocial and brutish instincts of 
men and it cultivates faith, hope, and love. Its 
great hold on the race is due to the fact that it 
ministers in the highest sense to human comfort 
and happiness. 

The scientist worships truth, the artist beauty, 
and every moral person goodness. Religion com- 



1 68 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

bines the worship of the true, the beautiful, and 
the good. The person who loves these is religious, 
it matters not what his professed creed may be. 
The irreligious man is the one who does not love 
the true, the beautiful, and the good — even though 
he may profess a noble faith and may breathe out 
threatenings and slaughter against those who differ 
from him. 

The great power of religion in every stage of 
human history bears witness to the fact that life 
is not merely thinking and doing, but feeling also, 
and that religion answers to a real human need. 
We shall never outgrow our need of religion, as we 
shall never outgrow our need of government and 
science, though we have outgrown many faiths and 
creeds in science and government, as well as in 
religion, and shall probably outgrow many more. 



II 

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 

As the study of comparative anatomy and embry- 
ology must inevitably have led to the doctrine of 
organic evolution, so the study of comparative 
religions must necessarily have led to a recognition 
of the fact of religious evolution. In this country 
at least, the wide recognition of the fact that there 
is much in common and much of value in all re- 
ligions dates from the World's Parliament of Re- 
ligions in 1893. Those who were then and there 
stimulated to study other religions came to see 
that many fundamental doctrines of Christianity 
go back to remote sources. 

It is not my purpose here to discuss in any 
detail the evolution of religion. This is a subject 
which has been dealt with by some of the greatest 
students of world rehgions who have shown that 
religion, no less than social organization and human 
intelligence, has undergone an evolution from the 
primitive behefs and practices of savage tribes to 
the lofty teachings and ideals of Christianity. 
This evolution is nowhere better illustrated than 
in the Old and New Testaments, where the record 
of the religious development of the Jews is traced 
from the primitive faith and customs of semi- 

;69 



I70 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

barbarous tribes to the highest ideals of reh'gion 
and morality that the world has ever known. 

Buckle thought that intellect is the great mov- 
ing force of history and that emotions are static. 
Certain it is that emotions and instincts are far 
more static than knowledge, just as physical in- 
heritance and evolution are more static than so- 
cial inheritance and evolution. When one consid- 
ers the utter anachronism presented by the sur- 
vival of primitive or even savage ideals of reli- 
gion, not only in an age of general enlightenment 
but even in persons of high intelligence and culture, 
it is only too easy to believe with Buckle that emo- 
tions and religion are static. When one reflects 
on the fact that for nineteen centuries so great a 
part of the world that professes to be Christian 
has remained heathen at heart and that to-day the 
teachings of Jesus are generally regarded by his 
so-called followers as too lofty to be practical we 
may well wonder whether mankind is making any 
progress in religion. Erasmus gave the ignorant, 
emotional religion of his day only fifty years before 
it should become extinct; Voltaire thought that 
for all intelligent persons the old religion was al- 
ready extinct; but in spite of notable advances in 
education, general information, and social organi- 
zation the "old-time religion" of emotion as op- 
posed to reason, of dogma rather than of works, 
still persists. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 171 

But emotions and religions, like physical organi- 
zation and instincts, do undergo slow changes in 
the course of centuries. The long view shows that 
here also there has been evolution and progress. 
If there has been an evolution of intellect and of 
society, it follows necessarily that there has been 
evolution in man's conception of religion, for even 
if the doctrines and commands of all religions were 
supernaturally revealed, those revelations must 
have been adjusted to the stage of evolution to 
which men had arrived. In his address on Mars' 
Hill in Athens, Paul clearly outlined this develop- 
ment of religion from fetichism and idolatry to 
the worship of "Him in whom we live and move 
and have our being." (Acts 17:22-31.) 

Primitive religions are almost entirely emotional 
and are based largely upon fear. Goethe described 
primitive religion as "fear without reverence." 
In the lowest grades of savagery the object of 
worship is some external thing. Family or tribal 
gods are identified with animate or inanimate 
objects which are the possession of the tribe. 
These fetiches are cherished and treated with cere- 
monies in order to bring good luck. In a slightly 
more advanced state of savagery the external ob- 
ject is the symbol of the god rather than the god 
himself; it is the "idol," which means the thing 
seen, and stands for the unseen god. 

The savage worships this idol or the god sym- 



172 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

bolized by it and makes sacrifices to it in order to 
propitiate it and to get it to fight for him and to 
do his will. Even in modern religions there is a 
large element of fetichism, as witness the adoration 
of wax figures, bones of saints, sacred relics, and 
the like. The fact is that many members of civi- 
lized society are, intellectually and morally, still 
savages and their religion is still fetichism. Caird* 
says: "The spirit of fetichism is the dark shadow 
which accompanies religion in every stage, from 
the savage who makes presents to the medicine- 
man of his tribe up to the Christian who prays, 
not that God's will may be done, but that God 
may be got to do his will." 

Family and tribal gods were beheved to be the 
ancestors of the tribe, even though they were 
animals or inanimate objects, and the tribe was 
frequently named from its tutelary deity and was 
supposed to partake of his nature. These deities 
fought and wrought for the good of their tribes 
and against all enemies. Survivals of such beliefs 
may sometimes be found even in modern nations, 
as, for example, in the recent war-time invocations 
to "Our good old German God." 

A higher type of religion rising above belief in 
tribal gods is found in the worship of the heavenly 
bodies and of the elemental powers of earth and 

* Caird, Edw. "The Evolution of Religion," Glasgow, 1893, vol. 
I, p. 225. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 173 

sky and sea. This is one of the earhest types of 
religion of civiKzed and semi-civiHzed nations — of 
Egypt, Assyria, Greece, India, Persia, China, Peru, 
and Mexico. Whereas the idea of tribal gods 
led to belief in multitudes of minor deities, the 
worship of nature, and especially of the heavens, 
tended to reduce the number of these deities. 
"The physical universalism of the heavens . . . 
is thus the first form in which the idea of a universal 
God, a God who is above, though not as yet exclu- 
sive of all others, presents itself to the spirit of 
man. . . . The physical universality of the heav- 
ens was the stepping-stone upon which the religious 
mind of India rose to the abstract universality of 
thought, the Absolute Being in which everything 
else is lost. This pantheism is the final outcome of 
polytheism, the fatal gulf that must ultimately 
swallow up all merely objective religions." * 

A still more advanced type of religion is found 
in anthropomorphism or homotheism, in which the 
object of worship is a greater and more perfect 
man. This is a recognition'of the fact that^the mind 
and soul of man are the highest and most worthy 
objects in nature, that they far surpass in com- 
plexity and significance the most stupendous phe- 
nomena of the material world. There is thus a 
reason for the fact that in endeavoring to endow 
his gods with the highest and noblest qualities 
* Caird, loc. cit., pp. 255-258. 



174 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

man should have made them in his own image. 
Owing to the difficulty of imagining the combina- 
tion of the superlative manifestations of all human 
qualities in one object of worship, these quahties 
were distributed among many gods, and thus we 
get the numerous anthropomorphic gods of Egypt, 
Assyria, Greece, and Rome. 

Finally the external objects of worship, whether 
fetiches, idols, forces of nature, or gods in human 
form, are abandoned for a subjective religion of 
thought. The material object is sublimated and 
etherealized; the forces of nature and the aspira- 
tions of man are combined in a universal and 
eternal spirit, all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good. 
And yet this sublimated idea of God combines the 
best elements of earlier and more primitive re- 
ligions, for rehgious systems, like scientific or gov- 
ernmental ones, evolve by absorbing, recombining, 
and elaborating earlier forms and ideas. 

An element of ethics or morality is found in all 
religions, even the most primitive, but it becomes 
a leading principle in only the most advanced types 
of religion. It is sometimes said that ethics is 
entirely lacking in primitive religions and yet this 
is not strictly true, for although the family or tribal 
god may be a demon to other tribes, he is the pa- 
tron and protector of his own particular tribe. 
There is ethics in such a religion, but it is a small 
and narrow kind of ethics, and only in the course 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 175 

of long evolution has it grown to include other 
tribes and races and nations; and correspondingly 
it was only in the course of long development that 
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came to be 
regarded as the Lord of all the earth and the Father 
of all mankind. ''Religion," said Matthew Arnold, 
"if we follow the intention of human thought and 
human language in the use of the word, is ethics 
heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; the pas- 
sage from moraHty to rehgion is made when to 
morality is applied emotion." The evolutionary 
view of religion would reverse the process here de- 
scribed and teach that to the emotions of primitive 
religion there was in course of time added ethics 
and morality. 

The fact of the evolution of religion is held by 
some to destroy its value and significance, but one 
might as well hold that the development of the 
individual destroys the value of personality or 
that the evolution of man destroys his unique 
superiority over all other creatures. The signifi- 
cant fact with regard to the race, personality, or 
religion is not what they begin with but what they 
lead to and what they end with. All forms of de- 
velopment are marvellous, miraculous if you please, 
but they are none the less facts. From the minute 
and relatively simple egg cell develops the com- 
plex body, the instincts, and the mind of man; 
from primitive protoplasm has developed all the 



176 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

multitudes of living things which inhabit the globe, 
including man, the paragon of animals, the climax of 
evolution ; from the earliest forms of society, namely 
the family and tribe, have developed all the com- 
plexities of modern civilization; from the primi- 
tive faith of the child or the savage has developed 
the highest type of religion and ethics that the 
world has ever known. Such development is a fact 
which cannot be successfully denied; but though 
we may recognize its steps and stages, we cannot 
fully explain its causes. The mystery of mysteries 
is how the egg cell or the original protoplasm 
or savage society or primitive religion came to 
contain all the marvellous potencies of develop- 
ment which they possess. 

The various stages and phases of religion repre- 
sent different attitudes of mind toward the funda- 
mental problems of existence, such as the origin 
and government of the universe, the constitution 
and order of nature, the origin and character of man 
and of society, and especially the mysteries of hu- 
man life and death, of good and evil, of instincts, 
emotions, intelligence, and consciousness, as well 
as the aspirations and ideals of individuals and of 
society. The type of religion which one holds is 
the reflection of his beliefs regarding these funda- 
mental things. Caird* says, "A man's religion is 
the expression of his ultimate attitude to the uni- 

^ Caird, loc, ciL, p. 30. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 177 

verse, the summed-up meaning and purport of his 
whole consciousness of things. ... In short it is 
the highest form of his consciousness of himself in 
his relation to all other things and beings; and if 
we want a brief abstract and epitome of the man, 
we must seek for it here or nowhere." 

In this sense religion is a personal matter; every 
man has his own religion, however irreligious it 
may seem to those whose attitude to the universe 
is different from his own. In this broadest sense 
religion includes a man's entire personality, his 
intellect, emotions, will; his thoughts, aspirations, 
activities. 

But in religion, as in everything else, mankind 
has desired uniformity. A purely personal religion 
may be good enough theoretically, but practically 
it fails to accomplish much of a lasting nature for 
human society. Because of the greater power and 
permanency of society, as contrasted with the indi- 
vidual, all types of religions have established or- 
ganizations, such as churches, schools, charitable 
institutions, even governments; and they have 
developed bodies of belief such as doctrines, dog- 
mas, and creeds. 



Ill I 

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEOLOGY 
AND SCIENCE 

Between religion and science there can be no 
other conflict than such as may arise between 
emotion and reason, between faith and knowledge. 
But between the science which deals with reli- 
gion, namely theology, and the sciences which deal 
with various aspects of nature, that is, the natural 
sciences, there have been many conflicts. When 
one considers all types of religion and theology, 
it is evident that there have been many conflicts 
not only between these religious systems and sci- 
ence, but also between them and the highest types 
of art and morality. However, we are here con- 
cerned primarily with the conflicts between natu- 
ral science, and especially biological science, and 
Christian theology. 

In the interests of uniformity of belief religious 
bodies have prescribed many intellectual, scien- 
tific, and philosophic systems and have claimed for 
them divine sanction and revelation, whereas all 
other knowledge might grow from more to more, 
such revealed knowledge was held to be perfect 
from the first, and where it came into conflict with 

science, so much the worse for science. 

X78; 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 179 

But so far as scientific doctrines are concerned 
no sane person now attempts to prove or disprove 
them by appealing to theology or the Scriptures; 
they stand or fall on scientific evidence only. 
Religious philosophy, on the other hand, is based 
chiefly on human needs and desires and here even 
more than elsewhere the tendency is to believe 
that which one desires to believe, and to adopt a 
faith which will satisfy the emotions but which may 
not satisfy the reason. And yet religious philosophy 
to be of any comfort or value must be sincerely 
beHeved. It must satisfy the reason as well as the 
emotions, and to this extent it must be consistent 
with one's knowledge of nature and of man. Con- 
sequently religious behefs and doctrines cannot 
stand still when all other knowledge is advancing. 
The faith of childhood or of the childhood age of 
the race will not satisfy more mature stages of 
development, and it would be strange if the the- 
ology of a pre-scientific age did not now and again 
clash with advancing knowledge. 

Almost all general ideas are expressed in terms 
of sense impressions; they are material pictures 
or images which in the course of time have come to 
stand for, or to symbolize, some more immaterial 
concept. This is true of all our thinking, but it 
is especially true in the field of religion. Religious 
thinking, expression, and instruction is almost en- 
tirely in the form of symbols. Much of our Ian- 



i8o EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

guage on this subject is symbolic, as, for example, 
"spirit" meaning breath or wind, "heaven" mean- 
ing that which is elevated, etc., and practically 
all of the forms, ceremonies, and ordinances of 
religion are symbols. The presentation of spiritual 
thoughts to immature minds must be in the form 
of sensory objects, and especially of visual images. 
Hence God, the spirit of truth and beauty and 
goodness, becomes the "Good Man," the general 
spirit of evil becomes the "Bad Man," heaven 
becomes the Celestial City with streets of gold and 
gates of pearl, etc. To insist that these and many 
other religious symbols, metaphors, or allegories 
shall be accepted by mature minds as real, material 
entities rather than as symbols is like requiring 
grown-up people to "believe in Santa Claus" as a 
real, physical personality rather than as a symbol 
of the spirit of Christmas — the spirit of good-will 
and service and love. The symbolism of religion 
is wonderfully rich and deep, and it is capable of 
appealing to all grades of intelligence and experi- 
ence from the child to the sage. On the other hand, 
a literal interpretation of these symbols is not only 
impossible for mature minds but it destroys their 
deeper meaning. "The letter killeth, the spirit 
maketh alive." More than anything else, it is 
extreme literalism in the interpretation of religious 
symbols which has caused the conflict between 
science and religion. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION i8i 

It is not possible to quiet this conflict by "taking 
the reason captive," as has sometimes been advised, 
nor is it possible to save an outgrown theology 
by stopping the advance of science or by discredit- 
ing its conclusions. It is not possible to satisfy 
mature minds with a primitive religion suited only 
to children, and the attempt to do this can only 
result in forcing thoughtful persons into an atti- 
tude of hostility to religion. The modern world 
has outgrown the primitive religions of tribal 
gods whether those of the Philistines or the Israel- 
ites; it has outgrown the idea of national gods 
whether of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germany, or 
America; it has outgrown the cosmogonies of the 
Babylonians and the science of the earliest stages 
of civilization, and it is just as impossible to force 
the modern mind back into these primitive beliefs 
as it would be to force the mature man back into 
the egg from which he developed. 

Much harm has come to religion through pious 
attempts to oppose the advance of science by 
unscientific methods. Through many dark ages 
the Christian church served as the intellectual 
as well as the spiritual guide of men and it is not 
surprising that with the dawn of a brighter era 
it should still have striven by its old methods to 
maintain its intellectual leadership; but the time 
has forever passed when scientific questions can be 
settled by an appeal to theology. The world no 



1 82 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

longer looks to the church, as it once did, for 
intellectual leadership. The time was when not 
only the pulpit but also the great seats of learning 
were the schools of the church. To-day we hear 
much of the loss of influence on the part of the 
pulpit and it is notorious that in the great universi- 
ties the church has lost control. The remedy for 
this condition is not to be found in increased zeal 
but in increased wisdom. Why should the church 
claim for itself authority in matters of science? 
If false doctrines are taught by science, and no 
doubt many are, science will furnish the cure. 
The only remedy will be found in more exact meth- 
ods of inquiry, in more laborious investigations; 
it can never come through resolutions of church 
councils, general assemblies, or even papal anathe- 
mas. 

It is the duty of the church to relate itself to 
present-day problems, to present-day methods, and 
knowledge, but it is not its duty to become spon- 
sor for scientific doctrines. It is as certainly a 
mistake for the church to stake everything upon 
the latest doctrine of science as upon the oldest — 
though not so fatal a mistake. The advice of 
Gamaliel is still good advice: "Refrain from these 
men and let them alone: for if this counsel or this 
work be of men, it will come to naught: but if it 
be of God ye cannot overthrow it: lest haply 
ye be found to fight against God." The logic of 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 183 

events will try all doctrines; natural selection will 
ultimately weed out the unfit in science and re- 
ligion, as well as in the physical, intellectual, and 
social worlds. 

It is the truth after all which all sincere men 
desire. God cannot be concerned that men should 
believe anything which will not bear the most 
searching investigation, and why should those who 
claim to be his ambassadors be fearful of this test? 
The truth is more to be desired than any form of 
doctrine or dogma. In all science the great article 
of faith is this, "Truth is mighty and will prevail." 
We may be sure of the ultimate triumph of the 
truth, whatever may become of your doctrine or 
mine; and further we may rest assured that there 
is no short cut to truth, no royal road, no way to 
save men from temporary error. "Prove all things, 
hold fast that which is good" is the only rule. 
This being so, the one fatal thing is not error but 
bigotry, not smallness of knowledge but small- 
ness of will and purpose and soul, not disbelief in 
doctrine but distrust of truth and reason and na- 
ture. In short the one thing to be desired by 
church and state, by society and individuals is 
not perfect truth nor a panacea for all human ills 
but openmindedness, sincerity, and sanity. 

Strictly speaking, science and religion deal with 
different subjects. The substance and purpose of 
science is knowledge; of religion, faith and con- 



1 84 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

duct ; the organ of science is primarily the intellect, 
of religion the emotions and the will; the goal of 
science is mechanism, of religion spirit. And yet 
as man himself is a unity and cannot in reality be 
divided into body, mind, and soul, so science and 
religion are, or should be, expressions of this unity 
acting in co-operation and not in antagonism: 

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell, 
That mind and soul according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster." 



IV 

NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL 

The centre of the conflict between science and 
theology is naturalism vs. supernaturalism. Al- 
most every religion claims to have had a super- 
natural origin, to have been made known to men 
by supernatural revelation, to be attested by super- 
natural miracles, to influence the lives of men in a 
supernatural manner and to lead to supernatural 
rewards or punishments in a future supernatural 
life. On the other hand, science has found that so 
many things which were once regarded as super- 
natural are due to natural causes that it assumes 
that all phenomena will ultimately be found to be 
natural, either by showing that they can be ex- 
plained by laws or principles already known or by 
other laws at present unknown and perhaps un- 
suspected. 

Professor W. K. Brooks once said, "The idea of 
the supernatural is due to a misunderstanding; na- 
ture is everything that is."* It is worth our while 
to consider briefly what is meant by these terms, for 
the conflict between science and religion is caused 

* William Keith Brooks Memorial Meeting, Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity Circulars, 1909. 

185 



i86 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

largely by this misunderstanding. Bishop Butler 
in his "Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion" 
defines natural as "that which is stated, fixed, 
settled," and Charles Darwin put this quotation 
from Butler opposite the title-page of his book "On 
the Origin of Species." The supernatural is that 
which is either opposed to nature in that it is not 
stated, fixed, settled, and hence is capricious or ac- 
cidental, or it also is natural, though we may not 
at present recognize the order, system, and laws 
which lie back of it. 

A. Popular Misconceptions of Nature 
AND THE Supernatural 

Many things were once supposed to be due to 
supernatural causes which are now known to be 
wholly natural. Primitive conceptions of the uni- 
verse represented everything as supernatural in the 
sense of being due to the will or caprice of the 
gods. The most regular and usual happenings 
such as the course of the sun through the sky, the 
rising and setting of sun and moon and stars, the 
winds and waves, thunder and lightning and storm 
were the direct acts of certain deities. And much 
more were extraordinary happenings, like earth- 
quakes, volcanic eruptions, comets, eclipses, and 
floods, attributed to the anger of the gods. How- 
ever, such phenomena were in time shown to be 
the natural results of natural causes, and intelli- 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 187 

gent persons no longer regard them as super- 
natural though they inspire awe and reverence as 
much as they ever did. 

No one now maintains that such phenomena in 
the inanimate world are supernatural, but the 
universality of law and system in the living world 
is not so generally admitted. In particular the 
psychic phenomena of animals and especially of 
man have appeared to be more than natural. The 
usefulness and fitness of many instincts and emo- 
tions, the truly marvellous qualities of memory and 
intelligence, the freedom and power of the will have 
long seemed to prove that the mind and soul are 
supernatural. And yet psychology reveals the fact 
that the mind no less than the body is subject 
to natural laws, and that our thoughts and wills 
and emotions are not as free and capricious as we 
sometimes think, but that they also are ordered 
and natural. 

We are conscious of the fact that we can by tak- 
ing thought modify our behavior; we can choose 
to do or not to do certain things and under strong 
stimulus we can force ourselves to do such extraor- 
dinary things that the belief has arisen that the 
will is absolutely free; that it is an uncaused cause, 
which stands apart from and outside of nature. 
But careful examination shows that this belief is 
untenable and untrue. We know that in many 
cases our choices are determined by causes, such 



1 88 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

as instincts, emotions, experiences, thoughts, exam- 
ples, admonitions, ideals; and in all cases a study 
of our own behavior, as well as that of others, 
shows that our acts are never uncaused. Our acts 
and choices are determined by many causes, some 
of which are external and others internal; they are 
not absolutely fixed but are more or less plastic; 
they are not lawless and causeless, but, on the 
other hand, they are not rigidly prescribed; they 
illustrate scientific determinism but not fatalistic 
predeterminism.* The fact that a science of psy- 
chology is possible proves that there are princi- 
ples or laws in the psychical as well as in the physi- 
cal world, and that in this sense mind and soul are 
natural and not supernatural. 

But even if the phenomena of the living world 
are not supernatural they are so complex and won- 
derful that some philosophers maintain that they 
are not capable of being explained as the res'olts 
of mechanistic natural causes. Consequently they 
maintain that life must include some undefined and 
inexplicable energy or entity such as vital force or 
entelechy, which if not supernatural, is at least not 
mechanistic or casual in its action. They main- 
tain that mechanistic explanations of life are never 
complete, whether with regard to ordinary physi- 
ology and development, or to regulation and re- 
generation after injury, or to animal behavior and 

*See Conklin, "Heredity and Environment," chap VI. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 189 

evolution. In all of these processes living things 
act as if they were guided by intelligent purpose, 
or as if the end were in view from the beginning. 
However, a detailed and experimental study of 
many of these vital activities shows that useful and 
apparently purposive actions are the outcome of 
the elimination of many useless responses and the 
preservation and continuance of useful ones, and 
experimental biologists are well-nigh unanimous in 
the opinion that the phenomena of the living world 
no less than those of inanimate nature are not only 
natural but that they are also causal and mecha- 
nistic. 

However no scientific or mechanistic explanation 
of anything is ever complete. No one can explain 
the properties of water by its chemical composi- 
tion, and yet we have reason to believe that those 
properties are indissolubly associated with that 
composition; no one can completely explain any 
function of a living thing in terms of its structure, 
or any structure in terms of function, and yet we 
know that they are invariably associated. The 
fact is that structure and function, body and mind, 
brain and consciousness appear to be two aspects 
of one thing — namely, organization or life — and 
neither can be fully explained in terms of the other. 

In the union of chemical elements properties ap- 
pear which could never have been predicted from 
the properties of the elements, as, for example, in 



I90 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

the union of hydrogen and oxygen to form water; 
and in the combinations of vital units new proper- 
ties arise which were not present in the units. This 
latter process Bergson calls '' creative evolution," 
but it is not fundamentally different from the sim- 
ilar process in chemistry which is known as "cre- 
ative synthesis." If a mysterious principle called 
"vitalism" is necessary to explain the properties 
of life, similar reasoning should lead one to attribute 
the peculiar properties of water to "hydrism" or 
of light to "photism." 

It seems unfortunate that those who are con- 
cerned chiefly to prove that no scientific or mecha- 
nistic explanation is ever complete should thus con- 
trast the phenomena of the living and the not 
living worlds and attempt to build up a distinction 
that is not only indefensible but is worse than use- 
less, since it logically leads to the view that the 
essential factors of biology, as contrasted with all 
other sciences, are forever beyond the reach of sci- 
entific investigation. Both animate and inanimate 
nature are full of mysteries, and none of our so- 
called "explanations" ever reach to the heart of 
things, but it is evident that both the living and the 
lifeless belong to the same universe. After all, the 
principle which the advocate of natural reHgion is 
concerned to prove is not vitalism but teleology, 
and while the latter is strikingly exhibited in or- 
ganisms, it is not confined to these alone, but is 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 191 

found in the whole order and system of nature, as 
we shall see in a later section. 

Little by little all sorts of mysterious phenomena 
which were once considered supernatural have been 
shown to be natural, and everywhere supernat- 
uralism has been losing ground and naturalism 
has been gaining. But there is still a wide-spread 
belief among people, who have not appreciated the 
significance of this fact, that while ordinary events 
occur according to nature, nevertheless natural 
laws may from time to time be set aside or abro- 
gated and supernatural phenomena may be inter- 
posed among natural ones. In this conception, 
nature is only that which is ordinary and usual, 
while that which is extraordinary or unusual is 
supernatural. 

There are still large areas in which popular belief 
in the supernatural prevails, and from time to time 
revivals of this behef carry us back to the condi- 
tions of earlier times. To-day a new supernatural- 
ism is abroad in the world as one of the legacies of 
the Great War. All sorts of supernatural manifes- 
tations have been reported on the battle-fields, in 
the camps, and elsewhere. One recalls the appari- 
tion of the Angel of Mons and of the Virgin at 
Metz, the new interest in spiritism, ouija-boards, 
and the like. Those who regard such things as 
supernatural manifestations and not as myths or 
superstitions do so generally because they desire 



192 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

to believe in the supernatural, and not infrequently 
this desire is catered to by conscious deceivers. 
Fakirs generally have turned largely to the exploi- 
tation of the supernatural, and their methods are 
now quite up to date. The old tricks of table- 
tippings and spirit-rappings and writing by unseen 
hands is giving place to telephonic and wireless 
communications, while ghostly faces are revealed 
on photographic or X-ray plates. Great emotional 
crises are peculiarly favorable to such manifesta- 
tions, whereas in the clear, cold light of reason 
they fade away as all ghosts do. 

The renewed interest in spirit manifestations 
which has spread over England and America since 
the war is, in many respects, similar to the belief 
in witchcraft which swept over different countries 
of Europe during the Middle Ages, and which lasted 
in some places well into the eighteenth century. 
Standing is given to such ignorant superstitions by 
a few intellectual and scientific sponsors, who can 
always be found for any novel or sensational belief, 
whether it be a denial of the laws of causality or of 
the value of scientific methods, a belief in perpetual 
motion, clairvoyance, ghosts, miracles, divine heal- 
ers, or reincarnations. All such beliefs represent 
a protest against the slow and rational methods of 
arriving at truth by careful and repeated observa- 
tions and experimentations, and a belief that by 
means of authority or inspiration, or occultism or 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 193 

mysticism, truth may be established more rapidly 
and successfully than by the slow methods of sci- 
ence. But the history of all such movements in 
the past abundantly confirms the conclusion that 
there is no royal road to truth, and no possibility 
of making real progress in human knowledge except 
by the slow and laborious methods of science. 

But while most persons who have had training 
in distinguishing facts from fancies, realities from 
vain imaginings, unite in rejecting these manifes- 
tations of "spirits," no one, not even the most crass 
materialist, can successfully deny the existence of 
what we call "spirit," meaning by this thought, 
emotions, ideals, aspirations, and volitions. These 
are as much a part of human nature as are our 
blood and bones and brains, but there is not a 
particle of evidence that they are supernatural; 
on the contrary they can be proved to be natural, 
orderly, and causal. The real issue between those 
who believe in supernaturalism and those who do 
not is whether anywhere there are satisfactory evi- 
dences that such spiritual phenomena are un- 
caused, undetermined, unlawful. I know of no 
such evidence. 

B. Scientific Conception of Law 

During the past three hundred years, and espe- 
cially during the past century, there has been de- 
veloping a scientific conception of nature as a 



194 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

system of eternal, universal laws. According to 
this view nothing happens in the universe by law- 
less chance or caprice; even chance and volition 
have their laws, they also are a part of nature and 
are "stated, fixed, and settled." This is not to 
say that nature is lacking in many of the qualities 
which time out of mind have been ascribed to the 
supernatural, such as mystery, infinity, and super- 
human power. Science indeed has revealed to us a 
universe that is vastly greater, more wonderful 
and more mysterious than was ever dreamed of 
before, but it is an orderly, stable, settled universe 
and not one of chance or caprice. Usually all that 
is meant by the word "supernatural" is super- 
human or wonderful, and the modern conception 
of nature has only magnified these qualities. 

Of course no scientist in his senses supposes that 
the whole of nature has been explored or that 
more than a faint beginning has been made in 
the discovery of natural laws. "There are more 
things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of 
in our philosophy." Many phenomena which are 
now mysterious and which are sometimes supposed 
to be supernatural may yet be explained as due to 
natural processes, but this would only prove that 
what had been termed supernatural is really natural. 
Although it is impossible to demonstrate that every- 
thing is natural, because everything has not yet 
been explored, it is true that everything that has 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 195 

been thoroughly investigated has been found to 
be natural, and this justifies the conclusion that 
nature is universal. 

Science attempts to classify phenomena, to re- 
duce them to order, to determine the regular suc- 
cession of cause and effect. It "explains" particu- 
lar events by showing that they come under general 
categories or "laws." For example, it is said that 
the law of gravity explains not only the falling of 
bodies on the earth, but also the forms and move- 
ments of the earth and of the heavenly bodies. 
But this means only that many different phenomena 
can be brought into one category. That all mate- 
rial bodies attract one another "directly as their 
mass and inversely as the square of their distance" 
is one of the greatest generalizations of science, 
but it explains only by classifying. It offers no 
explanation of why bodies attract one another in 
this way. It reveals a mechanism of nature but 
it does not account for that mechanism. 

Science deals only with mechanisms and proc- 
esses, with the constant relation of cause and effect, 
with the laws or usual operations of matter and 
energy and life, with what Euripides called "the 
unfailing order of immortal nature." In short it 
studies the mechanisms by which things have come 
to be what they are, but it cannot explain the origin 
of these mechanisms nor the purpose which they 
subserve. It explains the development of an t%g 



196 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

by revealing the steps by which the egg changes 
into the adult; it explains heredity by the initial 
constitution of the germplasm; it explains evolu- 
tion from amoeba to man by the original constitu- 
tion of amoeba, or of the chemical elements of 
which amoeba is composed, or of the electrons con- 
stituting the elements. In short it pushes back 
the mystery to earlier and earlier causes but in the 
last cause studied it leaves that mystery as great 
and inexplicable as ever. 

Philosophy and religion seek to go farther than 
this and to penetrate the mystery that lies back of 
the laws and mechanisms of nature. A mechanism 
or machine, in ordinary usage, signifies an instru- 
ment for accomphshing a result and this result is 
itself the most significant aspect of a mechanism; 
it is the '^purpose" for which the machine exists. 
Science reveals nature as a vast mechanism, philos- 
ophy and religion see in this mechanism a purpose. 
Science maintains that everything happens accord- 
ing to natural laws; philosophy and religion in- 
quire into the origin of these laws. Science ex- 
plains all phenomena as natural; philosophy and 
reHgion maintain that the greatest of aU mysteries 
is nature. 

In the field of science the idea of the supernatural 
is due to a small and insufficient view of nature. 
"Nature is everything that is." In the field of 
philosophy and religion the laws and order and me- 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 197 

chanisms of nature, which are the ultimate facts 
of science, themselves require an explanation. 
Such things are beyond the reach of science and 
exact knowledge, but not beyond the reach of rea- 
son and faith. In conclusion we may say with the 
scientists that all is natural in that it is "stated, 
fixed, settled"; and with philosophers and theo- 
logians that all is supernatural in that nature can- 
not explain itseK. "The tormenting riddle, eternal 
and inexplicable, is the existence, not of the uni- 
verse, but of nature." * 

C. SUPERNATURALISM IN RELIGION 

In religion only has a general belief in the occa- 
sional abrogation of natural laws, and the inter- 
position of supernatural phenomena among those 
that are natural, persisted to this day. Indeed 
many persons believe that this kind of occasional 
supernaturalism is the very foundation of reHgion, 
and to them a natural religion is a contradiction 
in terms. Nevertheless it is evident that the new 
wine of science is fermenting powerfully in the old 
bottles of theology. 

General belief in a supernatural revelation at- 
tested by supernatural miracles and influencing 
the hves of men by supernatural processes has 
been undergoing change. The universality of law 
in the natural world has led men to look for natural 

* Henderson, L. J. "The Order of Nature," p. 208. 



198 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

law in the spiritual world also. Supernaturalism 
even in religion is a great stumbling-block to those 
who find naturalism everywhere else; it makes 
religion not only unnatural but unreal to many. 
Accordingly we find among scientific exponents of 
religion a strong current in the direction of natural- 
ism rather than supernaturalism. The conflict 
regarding the natural and the supernatural is no 
longer exclusively between antagonists and de- 
fenders of religion, it is also between scientific and 
unscientific defenders. 

(a) One of the first of these conflicts between 
naturalism and supernaturalism in religion con- 
cerned the completeness and inerrancy of the Scrip- 
tures. For centuries their supernatural origin 
and absolute perfection were stoutly maintained. 
St. Augustine taught that the Bible contained the 
sum total of all human knowledge to the end of 
time. It was sometimes held to be a text-book of 
all sciences as well as of faith and practice. Such a 
claim was on a par with that ascribed by legend to 
the Kalif Omar regarding the Koran, who is said to 
have declared concerning the great Alexandrian 
Museum: "If the books agree with the Koran they 
are useless and need not be preserved; if they dis- 
agree with it they are pernicious. Let them there- 
fore be destroyed." The Christian churches have 
had ages of Bibliolatry, but in this, as in all other 
similar matters, there can be but one outcome. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 199 

The Bible, no less than other books, has been sub- 
jected to scientific study and criticism. Such study 
has shown that it is not a text-book of science and 
that it is not supernaturally free from errors. 

When Galileo was charged with teaching a dan- 
gerous and damnable heresy directly opposed to 
the authority of the Scriptures, it is fabled that he 
replied, "The Bible was given to tell how to go to 
heaven, and not how the heavens go." This answer 
and all that it implies, if once accepted and believed, 
would go far to quiet the age-long controversy 
between science and theology. I respectfully sub- 
mit that when it is attempted to make the Bible 
teach astronomy, geology, biology, or any other 
science, the real objects of the Scriptures are lost 
sight of, the cause of religion is not advanced and 
knowledge is not increased. If time permitted, 
I think it could be shown that the history of past 
controversies abundantly justifies this statement. 
Those who insist on taking the Bible as a text- 
book of science, sufficiently complete to establish 
or destroy any scientific doctrine, have learned 
little from the history of such claims in the past; 
they can know but little of the patient, pains- 
taking labors of the scientific investigator, or of the 
rights of a science in its own sphere. 

{b) Miracles which were once supposed to prove 
the existence of the supernatural and the authen- 
ticity of religion have become a source of doubt 



200 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

rather than of faith in this scientific age. Many 
theologians who have felt the spirit of science 
explain them as allegories or as natural phenomena 
not understood by those who witnessed them. And 
the consensus of intelligent opinion throughout 
the world is that if supernatural miracles were 
performed in former times, they do not occur to- 
day: "The age of miracles is past." 

Many devout believers in the actuality of the 
biblical miracles seek natural rather than super- 
natural explanations of them, as, for example, the 
passage of the Red Sea, the lightnings and thunders 
of Sinai, the sun's standing still upon Gibeon, 
Elijah and the chariot of fire, etc. In this connec- 
tion many Princetonians will recall Dr. Macloskie's 
explanation of Jonah's having found lodgment in 
the laryngeal chamber of the whale, where he could 
breathe, rather than in its stomach where he must 
have been suffocated. Most persons have heard 
natural explanations of the feeding of the multi- 
tude, the stilling of the tempest, the healing of the 
sick, the conversion of Paul, and many other New 
Testament miracles. The eagerness with which 
people grasp at parthenogenesis as a natural ex- 
planation of the virgin birth, or at suspended life 
and anabiosis as an explanation of the resurrection, 
shows how profound is the belief in the universality 
of natural law even in the case of many who believe 
in the actuality of the phenomena called miracles. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 201 

More and more the religious world is turning 
away from the supernatural aspects of the miracles 
to the moral lessons which they convey, from a 
literal interpretation of them to their spiritual 
significance. More and more all thoughtful people 
are seeing that nature, rather than the super- 
natural, is the greatest of all miracles. What can 
be more miraculous, in the original sense of that 
word, than the order of nature, the laws of matter 
and energy, the course of evolution from amoeba 
to man, the development of the human body and 
mind and personality from an egg? Not without 
reason did Mahomet, when asked to work miracles, 
point to the clouds and say, "Those are God's 
miracles." 



V 
EVOLUTION VS. CREATION 

For centuries science has been engaged in glori- 
fying the commonplace, in showing that natural 
phenomena are due to natural causes, and that the 
most stupendous as well as the most subtle phenom- 
ena, removed from us perhaps by almost an eternity 
of time and space, are but manifestations of con- 
tinuous natural processes which we may see and 
study for ourselves in the common phenomena of 
our daily lives. At every step in this process, 
science has had to contend with intrenched super- 
naturalism; to our ancestors it was self-evident 
that extraordinary occurrences required extraor- 
dinary causes, and that natural causes were wholly 
inadequate to accomplish great results. But step 
by step, before advancing knowledge of nature, 
supernaturalism retired from the plane of ordinary 
phenomena until she dwelt only in the misty moun- 
tain tops of origins, beginnings, creations; and 
day by day there was a growing respect for nature 
and her powers. 

Granted that wind and sun and rain, the regular 
recurrence of the seasons, that human birth and 
growth and death, and that even normal and ab- 
normal psychoses are natural phenomena, it is 



EVOLUTION AND RELICilON 203 

yet contended by many that in the origin of things, 
and especially in the origin of the living world, the 
supernatural is supreme. "How we were secretly 
wrought in the womb," "how the foundations of 
the earth were laid," how animals and plants and 
life itself first arose were supposed to be beyond the 
reach of natural explanation and a sure proof of 
supernatural creation. But the study of embry- 
ology has shown that we were wrought by natural 
processes, that development, although wonderful, 
is not supernatural; geology has found that the 
earth was formed according to natural laws; evolu- 
tion teaches that the origin and transformations 
of living things are the results of natural causes. 

It is true that science never penetrates as far as 
the ultimate origin and cause of anything. Like 
those ancient myths which represented the earth 
as resting upon a tortoise and the tortoise on an 
elephant, which was ultimately left unsupported, 
so science traces effects to causes and these to 
other causes, but in the end leaves the last cause 
unexplained. Science maintains that so far as 
experience goes, every event is due to pre-existing 
natural causes, and it assumes that this chain of 
cause and effect stretches back ad infinitum, though 
of course this cannot be proven. This chain may 
end in a first cause, an uncaused cause. But if so 
we may be sure that science will never be able to 
discover it, for it lies beyond the reach of finite 



204 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

knowledge and experience. The ultimate origin 
of the universe is utterly inaccessible to science. 
But regarding the proximate origin of the solar 
system, the earth, the various forms of life upon the 
earth, and last of all man, there is good scientific 
evidence that here also nature is supreme, that 
here also law, continuity, uniformity prevail. So 
far as we know or can conclude from present evi- 
dence, mechanism, law, and order are universal 
and have been so from all eternity. 

In this conflict of science with tradition there 
have been crises, turning-points, no less important 
for mankind than any which are associated with 
the rise and fall of nations; such a crisis was 
reached when astronomy was emancipated from 
the thraldom of supernaturalism by Newton and 
Laplace; when geology was freed by Hutton and 
Lyell from the absurd cataclysmal theory, which 
virtually taught that age after age the Creator, 
experimenting at world building, found the results 
not good, and so wiped them out and began again; 
but probably no similar crisis has had so profound 
an effect upon mankind as that revolution in our 
notions of the genesis of the living world which we 
associate pre-eminently with the name of Charles 
Darwin. 

Without doubt the greatest scientific generaliza- 
tion of the last century is the theory of organic 
evolution. The only other which can be compared 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 205 

with it, the doctrine of the conservation of energy, 
has not so profoundly influenced human life nor so 
greatly changed all the currents of human thought. 
Evolution has not only transformed biology, psy- 
chology, sociology, and anthropology, but it has 
given a new point of view to all science, art, and 
even religion. "The great theory of evolution," 
said John Fiske, ''is rapidly causing us to modify 
our opinions on all subjects whatsoever." 

Evolution is only one of many teachings of science 
which have come into conflict with theology, but 
because of the fact that supernaturalism made its 
last and strongest stand on the creation of the 
living world, and especially of man, it has been for 
more than a generation the centre of this conflict. 
Because organic evolution substitutes natural trans- 
mutation for supernatural creation, it has been said 
that it contradicts the biblical account of creation 
and denies the existence or need of a Creator; 
because it explains adaptations as the result of 
natural selection it has been held to destroy the 
evidences of design in nature; because of its con- 
clusions as to the origin and nature of man it has 
been accused of debasing man and reducing him to 
the level of the beasts. Consequently it is not 
surprising that evolution has been generally re- 
garded as having more important bearings on the- 
ology and religion than any other scientific doc- 
trine. 



VI 

EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLICAL 
ACCOUNT 

It has been asserted that evolution contradicts 
the biblical account of creation; however it ought 
not take one long to discover that although the 
Bible says that God created the heavens and the 
earth, the herb, the tree, the worm, the fish, the 
beast, and finally man, it does not describe the 
exact process by which he made them, and it is 
this very question of process with which evolution 
deals. I shall not attempt any subtile reconcilia- 
tion of geology and Genesis or of evolution and 
Revelation. I do not believe that the Bible teaches 
evolution or gravitation or the undulatory theory 
of Hght; nor on the other hand do I believe 
that it contradicts these generalizations of science. 
The first chapter of Genesis gives, not a literal and 
scientific account of creation, but a poetic and 
symbolic account. The simple but majestic lan- 
guage of the creation-story tells to all people of 
all grades of intelligence that back of the creature 
there is a Creator. No intelligent person now main- 
tains that it teaches that all things were made in 
six literal days; we could not if we would main- 
tain that it teaches the exact number and sequence 

8o6 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION ' 207 

of geologic ages; wny should any one attempt 
to maintain that it teaches the exact process of 
creation ? 

The traditional view of special creation is not 
founded upon the Mosaic account, as is commonly 
supposed. There is no evidence to show that the 
author of that account meant to teach that God 
created a single pair of each species, as is so often 
maintained, and that these species have ever since 
remained perfectly distinct. On the contrary, 
some of the church fathers, notably St. Augustine 
and St. Thomas Aquinas, believed in a kind of 
evolution. The current view that there was a sepa- 
rate creation for each species and that there are 
"as many species as issued in pairs from the hand 
of the Creator" did not attain any prominence 
until the time of the great naturalists, Ray and 
Linnaeus, and its chief literary expression is found 
not in Genesis, but in the seventh book of Milton's 
"Paradise Lost." Huxley, therefore, very properly 
calls it the Miltonic rather than the Mosaic hy- 
pothesis. "Theology has taken upon itself the 
thankless task of defending a long-abandoned 
scientific theory which is without a particle of 
biblical, ecclesiastical, or patristic sanction." 

Any one who is accustomed to scientific methods 
of inquiry must have been astonished again and 
again at the crude ideas or lack of ideas which 
many persons who believe in the special creation 



2o8 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

of man exhibit with regard to the details of that 
process. Those who are most bitter in their de- 
nunciation of the "monkey theory," as they term 
evolution, are sorely puzzled if required to give 
some precise idea regarding the process by which 
they conceive that God created man. The biblical 
account reads, ''And the Lord God formed man of 
the dust of the ground and breathed into his nos- 
trils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul." Here is process and, for aught we know to 
the contrary, slow and gradual process. More 
than that, some humble ingredients enter into 
this human dough, even the dust of the earth. 
Since the Scriptures plainly speak of a process in 
the creation of man, the opponents of the theory 
of evolution ought to be able at least to conceive 
of a dignified and divine way in which the Creator 
fashioned man; but, so far as I have observed, this 
they do not do. The idea that the eternal God 
took mud or mortar and moulded it with hands or 
tools into the human form is not only irreverent, 
it is ridiculous. How much more like the usual 
workings of that power, by whom and through 
whom are all things, is the view of evolution that 
God made the first man as he has made the last, 
and that his creative power is manifest just as 
truly and as greatly in the origin of the last child 
of Adam, as in the origin of Adam himself. 



VII 
IS EVOLUTION ATHEISTIC? 

Undoubtedly the usual conception of God as 
Creator and Ruler is that he is a supernatural 
being, a Great and Good Man in the skies, who 
created the universe out of nothing, set it going, and 
watches over it to see that it goes right; that he 
established natural laws by his word but now and 
again suspends them in order to accomplish par- 
ticular purposes or to benefit his worshippers. The 
scientific conception of nature and of the univer- 
sality of natural law conflicts with this idea, but 
it does not deny the existence of that which is 
symbolized by the word "God." Many scientific 
generalizations have been condemned as atheistic 
because they substitute natural processes for super- 
natural volitions, and chief among these is the 
theory of evolution. 

There has long been a wide-spread misunder- 
standing in the popular mind regarding evolution. 
That it is a great scientific question is rarely con- 
sidered; that it is the only attempt to solve by 
natural processes the problem of the origin of organ- 
isms is wholly disregarded. It is frequently looked 
upon, not as a law of nature, but as "an invention 

whereby it is hoped to get rid of a God." Even 

209 



2IO EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

Thomas Carlyle could see nothing in it but an 
atheistic theory, a gospel of dirt: "I have known 
three generations of Darwin's, atheists all. ... Ah ! 
it is a sad and terrible thing to see nigh a whole 
generation of men and women professing to be cul- 
tivated, looking around in a purblind fashion and 
finding no God in this universe. . . . And this 
is what we have got; all things from frog-spawn; 
the gospel of dirt the order of the day." 

Such a view can arise only from the most funda- 
mental misconception of the doctrine of evolution. 
It neither affirms nor denies the existence of a God; 
it deals only with processes and does not profess to 
touch the question of ultimate causation. It is no 
more atheistic to believe that individuals and spe- 
cies originally came into existence according to the 
natural law of development or evolution than it is 
to believe that individuals now come into the world 
according to this law. If the evolution of the spe- 
cies is an atheistic doctrine, so is the development of 
the individual. "Evolution," said Prof. Tyndall, 
"does not solve nor profess to solve the ultimate 
mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, that 
mystery untouched." Darwin, himself, held that 
the theory was quite compatible with the belief in 
a God; and in one of his last letters, he wrote:* "I 
have never been an atheist in the sense of denying 
the existence of God." 

*"Life and Letters," vol. I, p. 274. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 211 

Evolution is no more diagnostic of a man's 
views concerning theism than is politics. The 
custom, therefore, of sharply distinguishing two 
kinds of evolution, theistic and atheistic, is unfortu- 
nate. One might as well speak of theistic and athe- 
istic gravitation. Theists and atheists may accept 
or reject either theory, but the fact of such accep- 
tance or rejection in no way changes the scientific 
character of the theory as such, nor does it even 
remotely touch the evidences for the existence of a 
God. These evidences stand quite apart from the 
truth or falsity of evolution. 

Science deals only with secondary causes; it 
never reaches the first cause. It traces effects to 
causes and these to pre-existing causes and so on 
until the process must stop, hanging in mid air as 
it were, without finding the first cause. Infinity 
lies back of every phenomenon, even the simplest. 
Observation, experiment, and reason are the organs 
of science and with these alone it cannot reach " Him 
whom eye hath not seen nor ear heard." And yet 
where science ends faith begins, and like the child 
or the savage, the philosopher or scientist may still 
say, "In the beginning — God." 

If the universe is finite and had a beginning, 
there must have been a first cause which was itself 
uncaused. But if the universe is really eternal, 
nature and natural law are also eternal. Which 
of these two conceptions is correct can never be 



212 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

known by finite minds for the problem lies beyond 
the reach of human knowledge. But either view 
is consistent with belief in a God. In the former 
case the Supreme Being, the great First Cause that 
organized and started the universe and established 
natural laws is beyond and above nature; he is the 
"great exception," the one Supernatural Being in all 
the universe. In the latter case God is in nature, 
the reason in all natural law, the purpose in all 
natural processes, the supreme Mind and Will of 
the universe. Whether animals and plants and the 
world itself arose by special and sudden creation or 
are the result of an immensely long process of evo- 
lution, infinite power and wisdom are as neces- 
sary in the one case as in the other; yes, I think 
that there is a greater manifestation of the omnipo- 
tence, omnipresence, omniscience of an Infinite 
Being in the process of evolution than in that of 
creation itself. 

Evolution has revived the old controversy as to 
the government of the universe. Even as in the 
days of Newton and Laplace, it is claimed by some 
persons to-day that this theory, like that of gravi- 
tation, is but a subterfuge to "drive God out of 
his universe and put a law in his place." As long as 
the view is held that God is not present in natural 
laws the conflict between science and theology must 
continue. The only satisfactory ground of recon- 
ciliation between the two in this matter is to be 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 213 

found in the doctrine of the divine immanence in 
all natural phenomena. More and more all kinds 
of phenomena are being reduced to law. We are 
beginning to recognize that we do not live in a 
world of chance or caprice but in one of law, and 
if God is present only in those phenomena which 
cannot be reduced to law, he is being speedily and 
certainly crowded to a narrow and narrower mar- 
gin. But if he is in all law, then is he in the world 
as much, yes more than ever; and every blazing 
autumn hedge is really the burning bush out of 
whose midst the Omnipresent speaks, every clod 
is sacred ground, every day is a holy day, and we all 
live in the constant presence of Deity. 

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the 
plains, — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? 

God is law, say the wise, O Soul, and let us rejoice, 
For if he thunder by law the thunder is yet his voice."* 

The theory of evolution has given men sublimer 
conceptions of the world and of its Creator than 
has any rival doctrine. Contrast the old geocentric 
and anthropocentric views of the universe with 
the infinitely larger view which science has revealed. 
Contrast the old view of creation in six literal days 
with the revelations of science as to the immensity 

* Tennyson, "The Higher Pantheism," 



214 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

and eternity of natural processes. Contrast the 
old views that all organisms arose suddenly by 
divine fiat with the view that animals and plants 
and the world itself are the results of a long process 
of evolution. 

As Darwin so beautifully says: "There is grand- 
eur in this view of life with its several powers hav- 
ing been originally breathed by the Creator into a 
few forms or into one, and that whilst this planet 
has gone cycling on according to the first laws of 
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, 
most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and 
are being evolved."* 

There is grandeur in this view of man as the 
climax of all these vast ages of past evolution, as 
the highest and best product of this eternal process, 
as the culmination of the lives and experiences 
of innumerable multitudes of the predecessors of 
man. There is grandeur in this view of the Creator 
and of his relation to the world. Consider the 
eternal patience, wisdom, lawfulness which has 
through countless ages wrought out our present 
world; consider the continual process of evolution, 
the continual presence of the Creator in all natural 
processes, and then contrast with this the idea of a 
universe made out of nothing in six literal days 
by the word of a great Workman, who stands out- 
side his creation and watches it run ! 

* Darwin, Charles, "The Origin of Species," last paragraph. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 215 

Caird* says: "It is impossible for any one who 
has breathed the spirit of modern science, modern 
Hterature, and modern ethics, to beHeve in a purely 
objective God; to worship any power of nature or 
even any individualized outward image, such as 
those of Apollo or Athene. Still less is he able to 
worship a multitude of such images and so to com- 
pensate for the defect of one imperfect form by 
introducing others to supplement it. His God must 
be universal, and if he tries to picture him in an 
outward form, he will soon find it impossible to 
rest in any one object, and will repeat in his own 
experience the dialectic by which Polytheism disap- 
peared in the abstract unity of Pantheism. . . . We 
cannot think of the infinite Being as a will which is 
external to that which it has made. We cannot 
indeed think of him as external to anything, least 
of all to the spiritual beings who, as such, live and 
move and have their being in him." 

God in the form of a Great Man in the skies is 
both supernatural and unreal. How gross and 
blasphemous is the crude anthropomorphism which 
represents God as a "gaseous vertebrate"; how 
terrible are the oaths of some hundred or more years 
ago when men swore by the body, blood, bones, 
teeth, and other organs of God ! Contrast with 
these crude material conceptions God in the form 
of natural processes: 

* Caird, Edward, loc. cit,, p. 195. 



2i6 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels, 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." * 

God in all truth and beauty and love, in the order 
and constitution of the universe, in the eternal 
and immutable laws of nature, in the mind and 
soul of man ! Here is something natural, real, and 
sublime, something which appeals to the intellect 
as well as to the emotions, something which in- 
spires awe and reverence, something which influ- 
ences conduct and shapes character. 

"The God who satisfies our conscience," said 
Charles Kingsley, "ought more or less satisfy our 
reason also. To teach that was Butler's mission 
and he fulfilled it well. But it is a mission which 
has to be refulfilled again and again as human 
thought changes and human science develops. For 
if, in any age or country, the God who seems to 
be revealed by nature seems also different from the 
God who is revealed by the then popular religion, 
then that God and the religion which tells of that 
God will gradually cease to be believed in. For 
the demands of reason, as none knew better than 
good Bishop Butler, must be and ought to be 
satisfied. And therefore, when a popular war 

* Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey." 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 217 

arises between the reason of any generation and 
its theology, then it behooves the ministers of reh- 
gion to inquire, with all humility and godly fear, 
on whose side lies the fault; whether the theology 
which they expound is all that it should be or 
whether the reason of those who impugn it is all 
that it should be." 



VIII 

EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
DESIGN 

Everywhere the universe is a cosmos and not 
a chaos; "Order is heaven's first law." Order is 
seen in the whole stellar universe, the solar system, 
the earth; it is strikingly evident in the phenomena 
of physics and chemistry; but the order and fitness 
of nature reach a climax in the living world. 

Henderson has called attention to the fact that 
many remarkable fitnesses or preparations for life 
are found in the lifeless world. Many of the proper- 
ties of water, carbon dioxide, and the chemical 
compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are 
unique and these unique properties are essential 
to life; without them life could not exist, and they 
are so numerous that, as Henderson says, ''There is 
not one chance in countless millions of milHons 
that the many unique properties of carbon, hydro- 
gen, and oxygen, and especially of their stable 
compounds, water and carbonic acid, which chiefly 
make up the atmosphere of a new planet, should 
simultaneously occur in the three elements other- 
wise than through the operation of a natural 

law which somehow connects them together. There 

218 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 219 

is no greater probability that these unique proper- 
ties should be, without due cause, uniquely favora- 
ble to the organic mechanism. These are no mere 
accidents; an explanation is to seek. It must 
be admitted, however, that no explanation is at 
hand."* 

The one most striking and prominent character- 
istic of living things is the apparent purpose which 
is manifested in all their structures and habits. 
The adaptations of organisms to environment, 
of means to ends, of structures to habits has ever 
been and still is the greatest problem of biology. 
These adaptations of organisms are so precise and 
wonderful that they seem to imply intelligent 
design. Indeed it is very difficult to describe them 
without saying that they exist for this or that 
"purpose," and if a pure mechanist succeeds in 
avoiding the use of this particular word by substi- 
tuting for it some other term, such as "significance" 
or "use," he cannot wholly avoid the idea of pur- 
pose. 

It is scarcely possible to speak of any structure 
or function of an animal or plant that does not 
illustrate such adaptations. Think of the fitness 
of various types of limbs for locomotion on land, 
in water, and in air; of the various kinds of ah- 
mentary organs for the digestion and absorption 
of different sorts of food; of the many contrivances 

* Henderson, L. J. "The Fitness of the Environment," p. 276. 



2 20 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

for offense and defense, which different organisms 
possess. Consider the remarkable structures and 
habits for insuring cross-fertihzation in animals and 
plants and for the protection and nourishment of 
the young. Think of the fitness of the skeleton for 
support, of the muscles for contraction, of the heart 
with its valves for pumping blood, of the nervous 
system for receiving and transmitting stimuh; 
think of the fitness of the eye for seeing, of the 
ear for hearing, of the nose for smelling; think of 
the fitness of every organ for its particular use, and 
then consider the peculiar fitness with which all 
these organs and all their innumerable parts are 
co-ordinated into one harmonious whole. Viewed 
in this light "what a piece of work is a man," or 
any other organism ! 

Or consider the wonderful adaptations to be 
seen in the reactions and tropisms of the simplest 
organisms; in the instincts and habits of higher 
animals; in the development of intelligence and 
reason in man. Even one-celled animals and plants 
seem to be guided by intelligence though we know 
that this is not really true ; however in general 
they avoid injurious environments and find bene- 
ficial ones, and they have solved their problems 
of nutrition, reproduction, and defense almost as 
perfectly as have the highest animals. The in- 
stincts of the different members of a colony of ants 
or bees are very complex and very different, and yet 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 221 

all are wonderfully well adapted to the preserva- 
tion and prosperity of the colony. The migratory 
habits of fishes and birds are even more remarkable; 
the value of these habits is easily seen, but what 
series of natural causes can explain their origin? 
Finally, consider that the marvellous instincts, in- 
telligence, and psychic capacity of man have de- 
veloped out of the apparently simple reactions of 
a germ cell and that this whole process of develop- 
ment has been so co-ordinated and every step has 
been so well adapted and directed that it leads to 
consciousness and reason and purpose ! 

How can all these marvellous fitnesses of the 
living world and its environment be explained? 
The unhesitating answer of the naive person is that 
each and every one of them must have been de- 
signed in detail by an intelligent and supernatural 
Designer. And yet when studied in detail it is 
evident that each adaptation is a natural rather 
than a supernatural phenomenon, though it is 
by no means certain that in the last analysis it is 
the result of chance or pure mechanism. Some 
of the world's great philosophers and scientists, 
from Aristotle and Plato to Kant, Schopenhauer, 
Lamarck, Cope, Bergson, Driesch, and Henderson, 
have maintained that the fitness and order of na- 
ture can be explained only by assuming that there 
is some sort of teleological principle in nature, which 
lies back of or runs parallel with the principle of 



22 2 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

causality — something which acts more or less like 
human will or purpose, and which is itself an un- 
caused cause lying outside the field of scientific 
inquiry. 

Kant has expressed this opinion in a well-known 
passage: "It is quite certain that we cannot be- 
come sufficiently acquainted with organized crea- 
tures and their hidden potentialities by aid of 
purely mechanical natural principles, much less 
can we explain them: and this is so certain that 
we may boldly assert that it is absurd for man 
even to conceive such an idea, or to hope that a 
Newton may one day arise to make even the pro- 
duction of a blade of grass comprehensible, accord- 
ing to natural laws ordained by no intention." 

Haeckel and other pure mechanists have hailed 
Darwin as Kant's impossible Newton of the living 
world and his theory of "natural selection" as the 
purely mechanical principle which accounts for the 
adaptations of organisms. Darwin proved in mas- 
terly manner that overpopulation leads to a struggle 
for existence, and in this struggle the unfit are 
eliminated and the fit are favored. In this way 
many of the remarkable adaptations of the living 
world can be causally explained, and if this princi- 
ple of the elimination of the unfit is extended from 
whole organisms to parts of organisms, germinal 
units, and even to the reactions of individual or- 
ganisms, it is possible that all kinds of adapta- 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 223 

tions may be thus explained. The origin of fitness 
rather than the "origin of species" is the greatest 
problem in the worid of life and it is the crowning 
glory of Darwin's theory that it offers a mechanistic 
solution of this eternal problem of life and evolu- 
tion. 

If this be true, does it not finally dispose of tele- 
ology in nature ? I think not, although it undoubt- 
edly modifies that doctrine and substitutes natural 
causes for supernatural ones. In the light of Dar- 
win's theory we see that adaptations are the results 
of natural causes ; the causal mechanism applies to 
all the fitnesses of nature as well as to other phe- 
nomena; but back of all mechanism, or running 
through all mechanism, is teleology or purpose. 

From the standpoint of science and philosophy 
the origin of this order and mechanism is the great 
secret of the universe. Science deals only with 
mechanisms and a purely scientific explanation 
must be mechanistic, but there is no mechanical 
explanation for the ultimate mechanism of the 
universe; mechanism cannot explain itself. The 
mechanism of a locomotive will explain what 
it does, but it will not explain its origin nor the 
purpose which it subserves. The organization of 
an animal or plant or egg is said to explain what 
it does but it will not explain the teleological na- 
ture of that organization. 

Biologists no longer think of any adaptation as 



224 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

having been directly created for the purpose which 
it now serves but rather as having been slowly 
developed in the course of evolution. Neverthe- 
less in tracing an adaptation to its sources we do 
no more than transfer the origin of fitness to earlier 
causes. We may explain the fitness of the eye as 
due to its ontogenetic development, and this as 
due to heredity and environment, but this does 
not explain how the potentialities of the eye came 
to be in the germplasm. We have merely shifted 
the problem to an earlier stage. And the same is 
true of the evolution of eyes; our explanation of 
the origin of eyes may be that they are due to 
mutation and natural selection, or to the inherited 
effects of use and disuse, but in either case we do 
not explain the fact that eyes were potentially 
present in these causes. We have merely shifted 
the problem from the fitness of results to the fitness 
of the causes of those results; and in spite of Darwin 
and his great theory it is still true that no Newton 
has yet arisen *'to make even the production of a 
blade of grass comprehensible, according to natural 
laws ordained by no intention." 

Most of all when we consider the whole course of 
evolution from amoeba to man, from the simplest 
motor responses to the development of intelligence 
and reason capable of studying the universe and its 
origin, are we impressed with the thought that 
evolution must have been guided by something 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 225 

other than chance. If progressive evolution is 
increasing complexity of organization and increas- 
ing adaptation to the environment, it is surely no 
accident that organization and environment have 
been so correlated that they have led to the per- 
fection of adaptation which we see all about us. 
Evolution has not been an eternal see-saw; it has 
led somewhere. The fact that organisms can adapt 
themselves to changing environment is no accident ; 
the fact that environment has so changed as to 
bring about progress is no accident. Philosophi- 
cally it is impossible to escape the conclusion that 
evolution has revealed a larger teleology than was 
ever dreamed of before — a teleology which takes in 
not only the Hving but also the lifeless world. 

Given water, carbon dioxide, and the carbon 
compounds with the unique properties to which 
Henderson has called attention, and it is conceiva- 
ble that Hfe could have arisen through the operation 
of natural laws; and again when once Hfe and its 
mechanisms are given the living world could have 
evolved through the operation of natural laws. 
In the transformations of germplasm and of inher- 
itance units we probably have the mechanism of 
evolution, and in the survival of the fit and the 
elimination of the unfit we probably have the mech- 
anism of adaptation. But the great problem and 
mystery which lies back of all this mechanism is 
how the environment favorable to life came to 



226 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

have these unique properties, how it happened that 
all the multitudes of co-operating factors necessary 
to the origin of life came together in the right way 
and at the right time, how primitive protoplasm 
came to contain the potencies of all future evolu- 
tion, and how it happens that the environment 
was such as to bring out these potencies in the 
long course of evolution. 

These are not scientific problems, for they are 
probably beyond the reach of science and exact 
knowledge, but not beyond the reach of philosophy 
and religion. The philosophical mind refuses to 
believe that purpose in human behavior and fitness 
in nature are merely the result of chance, even of 
many chances. As well might one try to explain 
the play of Hamlet as due to an explosion, or a 
series of explosions in a printing office. Many of 
the most profound students of nature from Aris- 
totle to modern evolutionists have found it neces- 
sary to assume the existence of some initial teleo- 
logical principle. Weismann held tenaciously to 
a mechanistic conception of nature, but he also 
held that extreme mechanism was consistent with 
extreme teleology; indeed he maintained that 
"The most complete mechanism conceivable is 
likewise the most complete teleology conceivable. 
With this conception vanish all apprehensions that 
the new views of evolution would cause man to lose 
the best that he possesses — morality and purely 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 227 

human culture." And no less a mechanist than 
Huxley said, "Perhaps the most remarkable ser- 
vice to the philosophy of biology rendered by Mr. 
Darwin is the reconciliation of teleology and mor- 
phology, and the explanation of the facts of both 
which his views offer. The teleology which sup- 
poses that the eye, such as we see it in man or one 
of the higher vertebrata, was made with the pre- 
cise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of 
enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has 
undoubtedly received its death-blow. Neverthe- 
less it is necessary to remember that there is a 
wider teleology, which is not touched by the doc- 
trine of evolution, but is actually based upon the 
fundamental proposition of evolution." And Dar- 
win himself confesses "the extreme difficulty or 
rather impossibility of conceiving this immense 
and wonderful universe, including man with his 
capacity of looking far backward and far into 
futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. 
When thus reflecting," he continues, "I feel com- 
pelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent 
mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and 
I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion 
was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I 
can remember, when I wrote the 'Origin of Species'; 
and it is since that time that it has very gradually, 
with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then 
arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, 



228 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as 
low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be 
trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?" * 

The probabilities are almost infinity to one 
against the conclusion that the order of nature, the 
fitness of the environment for Hfe, and the course 
of progressive evolution with all of its marvellous 
adaptations are all the results of blind chance. 
The scientist and philosopher may explain this 
order and harmony by a mysterious and inexplica- 
ble teleological principle, but the convinced theist 
will regard it as design. Thus upon this topic, 
Asa Gray, the well-known botanist, said: "The 
wiser and stronger ground to take is that the deriv- 
ative hypothesis leaves the argument for design, 
and therefore for a Designer, as valid as it ever 
was; that to do any work by instruments must 
require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion 
rather of more than of less power than to do it 
directly; that whoever would be a consistent theist 
should believe that Design in the natural world is 
co-extensive with Providence, and hold as firmly 
to the one as he does to the other." 

On the other hand the more cautious scientific 
attitude is well expressed by Henderson in the fol- 
lowing thoughtful sentences: "We may progres- 
sively lay bare the order of nature and define it 
with the aid of the exact sciences. Thus we may 

* "Life and Letters," vol. I, p. 282. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 229 

recognize it for what it is, and now at length we 
clearly see that it is teleological. But we shall 
never find the explanation of the riddle, for it 
concerns the origin of things. Upon this subject 
clear ideas and close reasoning are no longer possi- 
ble, for thought has arrived at one of its natural 
frontiers. Nothing more remains but to admit 
that the riddle surpasses us and to conclude that 
the contrast of mechanism with teleology is the 
very foundation of the order of nature, which must 
ever be regarded from two complementary points 
of view, as a vast assemblage of changing systems, 
and as an harmonious unity of changeless laws and 
qualities working together in the process of evolu- 
tion." * In short, science reveals to us a universe 
of ends as well as of means, of teleology as well as 
of mechanism, and in this it agrees with the teach- 
ings of philosophy and religion. 

* j'The Order of Nature," pp. 20S-209. 



IX 

THE NATURE OF MAN 

The theory of evolution presumes to determine 
man's place in nature and to many it seems that it 
degrades man and reduces him to the level of the 
beasts. That man is an animal, however, no one 
who has given the matter any consideration, can 
for a moment doubt. The entire structure, develop- 
ment, and functions of man's body unmistakably 
proclaim that he is related to the animals. He is 
born, nourished, and reproduced, he is subject to 
the laws of nature, to disease and death as is the 
humblest animal or plant. Every bone, muscle, 
and nerve of the human body is found in almost 
exactly the same position and shape in the higher 
mammals. As Romanes says, "Here we have a 
fact, or rather a hundred thousand facts, which 
cannot be attributed to chance, and if we reject 
the natural explanation of hereditary descent from 
a common ancestry we can only suppose that the 
Deity in creating man took the most scrupulous 
pains to make him in the image of the beasts." 
According to his physical structure man must be 
classified as an animal, a vertebrate, a mammal, 

and finally a primate, to which order the monkeys 

230 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 231 

belong. And yet there are emotionalists who deny 
this animal classification. John Fiske tells of a 
man who became very indignant when told that he 
was a mammal and exclaimed: "I am not a mam- 
mal, nor the son of a mammal." He adds that he 
had probably been brought up on a bottle. 

Many persons can see in such animal ancestry 
only the loss of dignity and the degradation of 
man, and I freely admit that as sometimes expound- 
ed by evolutionists this opinion is justified. If 
man is the result of unintelligent forces and proc- 
esses; if as one biologist has said, "The evolu- 
tion of consciousness is the greatest blunder in the 
universe"; if men are born by millions only to be 
swept away by flood, fire, famine, pestilence, and 
war; if they Hve and die like the beasts and leave 
only their bones and implements behind; if suffer- 
ing and struggle are purposeless and lead to noth- 
ing — if this really were the teaching of evolution 
then certainly it would be true that evolution de- 
bases man and destroys the hopes of mankind. 
But this is not true and it is not the teaching of 
evolution but rather of pessimism and atheism. 

The blighting influence of atheism is shown in 
just such conclusions as those mentioned, for it 
substitutes blind chance and necessity for plan and 
purpose, both in nature and in human life. If 
there is no teleology in nature, the course of evo- 
lution leading to man and to consciousness is the 



232 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

result of blind and blundering accident. If there 
is no purpose or value in human labor and suffer- 
ing, life is not worth living. But there are evi- 
dences of teleology in nature and of purpose in 
human life. Even struggle and suffering and death 
have their value if in the long course of evolution 
they lead to progress. Men do not die and leave 
only their bones and implements, but "they rest 
from their labors and their works do follow them." 
"Others have labored and we have entered into 
their labors." Civilization is what it is to-day be- 
cause of the labor and influence of millions of per- 
sons, most of whom are wholly unknown to us. 
Only a few men have achieved immortal fame, but 
multitudes have contributed to human progress. 

Granting that there is teleology in nature, prog- 
ress in evolution, and purpose in human hfe, it does 
not really matter from the standpoint of religion 
whether the universe and man came into existence 
by evolution or by creation. I cannot see that it 
is any more degrading to hold that man was made 
through a long line of animal ancestry, which ulti- 
mately came from the dust, than to believe that 
man was made directly from the dust. Surely the 
horse and the dog and the monkey belong to higher 
orders of existence than do the clod and the stone. 
Whether we accept the teaching of evolution or the 
most literal interpretation of the biblical account 
we are compelled to recognize the fact that our 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 233 

bodily origin has been a humble one; as Sir Charles 
Lyell once said, "It is mud or monkey." Nature, 
revelation, and human history love to proclaim the 
fact that lowliness of origin is not inconsistent with 
the highest ideals of perfection. "They that deny 
a God destroy man's nobility," said Bacon; "for 
surely man is of kin to the beasts by his body; 
and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is 
an ignoble creature." 

To those whose only thought of the animal 
creation is one of contempt and disgust, the sug- 
gestion of man's animal ancestry must come as a 
cruel shock. But those whose eyes are opened to 
the beauty and innocence, the joys and sufferings, 
the strength and weakness, the intelhgence and 
affection of living things; those who believe with 
Coleridge that 

"He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small, 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all"; 

— those whose Hves are simple and who are not 
puffed up with a foolish pride as to their own dignity 
will neither be ashamed nor afraid to follow the 
example of St. Francis of Assisi who called the 
birds his brothers and thought that they praised 
God in the forest as the angels do in heaven. 
But if man is the brother of the animals, he is 



234 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

also akin to the Infinite. The glory of the brute 
is physical, the glory of man is intellectual, social, 
spiritual. The perfection reached by the brute is 
strength, cunning, at best moral innocence; the 
perfection reached by man is intelligence, reason, 
freedom, faith, hope, love — in short, noble char- 
acter. The psychical elements which in animals are 
"cabined, cribbed, confined" reach in man their 
fullest expansion. The intellect, the emotions, the 
will, love, mercy, justice, responsibility, philan- 
thropy, conscience, the search after and worship 
of the true, the beautiful, the good, the Infinite — 
these proclaim man a spiritual being. Evolution 
teaches the animal ancestry of man, but in spite of 
this it does not degrade him, for it teaches that 
he is the consummation of this stupendous process. 
''The dignity of man is not due to the fact that re- 
cently and miraculously he was launched into the 
world; the real dignity of man consists not in his 
origin, but in what he is and what he may become." 
Evolution unquestionably denies that the primi- 
tive condition of mankind was one of perfection 
as measured by our present standards. In this 
regard it is in entire accord with the conclusions of 
history and archaeology. There is every evidence 
that human history has been a development from a 
simpler to a more complex state ; in short an evolu- 
tion. As to the culture of the prehistoric period 
there can be no question that it was in every way 



EVOLUTION -AND RELIGION 235 

simpler and more primitive than that of the his- 
toric era, as is demonstrated by prehistoric remains 
and indirectly proven by a study of races at present 
in the prehistoric condition. 

This primitive condition of the race could scarce- 
ly be called a state of perfection. According to 
the bibhcal account Adam and Eve were naked, 
houseless, uncultured; in body fully developed, 
in mind and soul children. That they were inno- 
cent as children are, has been interpreted by many 
to mean that they were perfect, not only physically 
and morally but also intellectually. Lyman Abbott 
says that he once heard a preacher say in one of 
his sermons that Adam and Eve undoubtedly 
knew all about the telephone. There are probably 
few even among literalists who would go that far 
to-day. 

As a result of this animal ancestry many animal 
instincts survive in man which conflict with his 
higher intellectual and social life. In this way 
there comes to be that lack of inner harmony and 
social fitness to which all religions and all systems 
of ethics have directed attention. This is the main 
source of the conflict between emotionalism and 
rationalism, between the individual and society. 
So far as I can judge, animals, even the highest, 
are not troubled by a sense of sin, repentance, or 
responsibility. On the other hand, mankind as a 
whole is characterized by the possession of such 



236 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

a sense. Between animals and men there is this 
great difference. If man came from the animals 
he also must have come from an irresponsible and 
hence an innocent condition. Before any ''fall" 
from this condition was possible there must have 
been the step upward to responsibility and moral 
consciousness. So far as we know the highest 
animals have only the most rudimentary moral 
ideals. Only in him in whose soul are lofty ideals 
can there be any adequate consciousness of a fall. 
A man whose ideals were wholly brutish would 
have no condemnation in living the life of a brute. 
But he who has awakened to the fact that he is a 
social and moral being, who knows the better and 
does the worse, he has fallen from the higher to 
the lower. Until reason and the moral sense are 
developed in man there can be no fall; there is 
nothing to fall from. When these are developed 
there arises a conflict between the old habits of 
unreason, irresponsibility, and sensuous pleasure 
and the new ideals of reason, responsibility, and 
duty; when in this conflict the former overcome 
the latter there is a moral fall. In this sense the 
"fall of man" is no unique historical event; it is 
a part of the personal experience of all men. 



X 

THE RELIGION OF EVOLUTION 

Francis Galton closes his book on "Inquiries 
into Human Faculties" with these words: "The 
chief result of these inquiries has been to elicit 
the religious significance of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion. It suggests an alteration in our mental atti- 
tude and imposes a new moral duty. The new 
mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral 
freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new 
duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently 
with, and not in opposition to, the old ones upon 
which the social fabric depends, is an endeavor 
to further evolution, especially that of the human 
race." 

A. Progress Through Struggle 
The religion of evolution is a religion of progress 
through struggle and effort. It is neither pessi- 
mism nor optimism, but realism. It recognizes 
the existence of unfitness, disharmony, and evil, but 
interprets these as challenges to their alleviation. 
The powers of nature which were feared and dreaded 
by our savage ancestors have been harnessed for 
the service of man. Great catastrophes in which 

hundreds of lives are lost in fires and floods and 

237 



238 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

wrecks teach a lesson which even ignorance can 
appreciate, namely that some way must be found 
to avoid these things in the future. Disease, suffer- 
ing, and death are challenges to man of the most 
insistent and persistent sort to find out their causes 
and to eliminate or control them. Millions of 
human beings suffered and died from tuberculosis, 
plague, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, 
syphilis, cancer, and other diseases before remedies 
for some of these were found, and millions more will 
suffer and die before they are eliminated — but does 
any far-seeing person doubt that this will ultimately 
be achieved? Injustice and crime, ignorance and 
superstition are not useless if they lead society 
to seek out their causes and to eliminate them. 
Even the horrors of war teach a lesson which the 
world is slowly learning and, if mankind can learn 
by experience, the time will come when war shall 
be no more. And as to the inner conflict between 
emotion and reason, selfishness and altruism, evil 
and good, we know from experience that progress 
can be made only by effort; that inner peace does 
not come from satiety but from successful struggle; 

"That men may rise on stepping stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 

The religion of evolution holds forth no hope of 
a perfect millennium in which all evil shall be elimi- 
nated and all struggle shall cease. On the con- 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 239 

trary it teaches that not only progress but even 
continued existence depends upon struggle against 
adverse conditions. There can be no progress of 
any kind without struggle; in physical evolution 
progress has depended upon the struggle for exist- 
ence; in intellectual evolution upon the struggle 
for freedom and enlightenment; in social evolution 
upon the struggle of ethical ideals and instincts 
against antisocial ones. Passively waiting for evo- 
lution to carry us to the skies will be of no avail. 
Progress is no necessary part of evolution and in 
general it is easier to go backward than forward. 
The further evolution of man must depend upon 
the struggle and success of rational efforts and 
ideals. We must seek through eugenics and eu- 
thenics to improve the bodies of men; through 
education, the minds of men; through religion the 
morals of men. We must struggle against disease 
and physical defects, against effeminacy, luxury, 
and indolence, and against the retrogressive selec- 
tion of civilization; we must struggle against igno- 
rance, illiteracy, and superstition; against bigotry, 
selfishness, brutality, and hate. The struggle against 
evil in general is thus a condition of social progress, 
as the struggle for existence against adverse con- 
ditions is a factor in physical progress. 

Evolution thus offers a rational solution of the 
great problem of evil. It has taught us that there 
is all about us a great and world-wide struggle for 



240 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

existence; that inaction and satiety end in degen- 
eration and that advance can be purchased only 
by struggle, suffering, and death. The apparent 
malevolence of nature finds in evolution a benef- 
icent explanation. Measured by its results who 
will say that the outcome of evolution is not worth 
all that it has cost ? Purposeless struggle and suffer- 
ing would be evidence of malevolence; but evolu- 
tion has shown that struggle, suffering, and death 
when viewed from the standpoint of nature as a 
whole are not purposeless, but rather that these 
things are factors in a great world movement, in an 
infinite process of evolution in which the "whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain . . . wait- 
ing for the manifestation of the sons of God." The 
religion of evolution is thus at one with the re- 
ligion of revelation. 

B. Ethnocentric rather than Egocentric 

A religion that looks merely to personal rewards 
or punishments in the present or future is not one 
of the highest type; on the other hand the religion 
of service and sacrifice for the good of others, the 
religion of which Christ was the great exemplar, 
must more and more become the religion of human 
society in future stages of evolution. 

In the past religion has dealt to a large extent 
with the individual and his relation to God; its 
chief concern was the salvation of individual souls 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 241 

and their preparation for a future life; it has been 
largely egocentric. The religion of the future must 
more and more deal with the salvation of society; 
it must be ethnocentric. Evolution has taught us 
the superlative importance of the race or species. 
Among all organisms the one Hves for the many, 
the individual reproduces and labors and dies for 
the race. In man no less than in lower organisms 
the welfare and evolution of the species is of supreme 
concern. And the greatest and most practical 
work of religion is to further the evolution of a 
better race. This religion looks forward not only 
to better individuals as its ultimate goal, but also 
to a better association of individuals ; to a rational 
organization of society in which social specializa- 
tion and co-operation will be greatly increased, in 
which poverty and disease will be greatly decreased, 
in which heredity, environment, and education will 
be greatly improved. 

At times it seems that selfishness and intolerance 
are on the increase, that all social progress has 
stopped and that degeneration and disintegration 
have set in. At present we are witnessing an out- 
break of license and anarchy on one side and of 
reaction and intolerance on the other. At such 
times it is especially necessary to take the long view 
of human evolution, to remember from what so- 
ciety has developed, and to realize that in the course 
of social evolution selfishness, bigotry, and anarchy 



242 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

are eliminated as foul water is purified in flowing 
down stream. The antisocial, the selfish, and the 
unscrupulous find that as their hand is against 
every man so is every man's hand against them. 
This is the law of reciprocity. All normal men are 
"Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of 
scorn, the love of love." Service is not only the 
law of society, it alone is the way of success. The 
ethnocentric religion of evolution merely supple- 
ments and enforces the ethical teachings of the 
most advanced religions; in all of them the goal is 
the same, namely service. 

If it be true that the fittest physically is the most 
viable, the fittest intellectually the most rational, 
the fittest socially the most ethical, then it follows 
that in the long run natural selection will operate 
against the less viable, the less rational, and the 
less ethical. There is "a power not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness," for reasonableness, and 
for fitness. As the stars in their courses fought 
against Sisera, so the nature of things makes for 
progress. 

Can this religion of science and evolution be 
incorporated in the organized religions of the civi- 
lized world? Can religion in general keep pace 
with the intellectual and social advance of man- 
kind? Can it rid itself of its useless inheritances 
from a savage past; can it throw off the relics of 
fetichism, emotionalism, and superstition; can it 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 243 

be saved from irrationalism, literalism, and formal- 
ism ? Can Christianity become the religion of rea- 
son and science as well as of emotion and faith 
and be made the power for individual and social 
progress which its founder intended? 

Certainly progress in this direction has been 
slow, and at times it seems as if religious evolution 
had come to an end. Thousands of thoughtful 
and reverent men have left the churches and re- 
nounced the creeds, the literal interpretation of 
which they could no longer support, and other 
thousands have been prevented from doing this 
only by the hope that churches and creeds might 
be reformed from within. We must recognize the 
fact that complete uniformity of beUef can never 
be attained in religion any more than in poHtics 
or anything else. Various churches and faiths 
must always exist for various types of human be- 
ings. It is often said that existing forms of religion 
with their literalism and formaHsm are well adapted 
to the mass of mankind. This is probably true; 
most men are not greatly interested in an intellec- 
tual or philosophical type of religion, but all men 
are interested in higher ideals of conduct and duty. 
In all progress religion should lead rather than lag 
behind, and at least its intellectual requirements 
need not be so primitive as to drive out those of 
more advanced intelligence. 

How extraordinary it is that nineteen centuries 



244 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

after the life and labors of the greatest religious 
teacher and social reformer in the history of man- 
kind, and after the spread of his teachings over all 
the earth, there should still be left a considerable 
body of his so-called followers who identify re- 
ligion with the literalism and formalism which he 
condemned and whose test of righteousness is 
intellectual assent to a formal creed rather than 
dedication to a life of service ! But to-day we are 
in the midst of a rehgious revolution, which is 
going on so quietly that many do not notice it, 
although it is a greater and more fundamental 
revolution than any since the early years of the 
Christian era. We are witnessing great changes 
in the attitude of the churches on questions of 
faith and science. The spirit of science has entered 
into religion. This spirit demands not uniformity 
of belief but uniformity of aim, not absolute and 
perfect truth but the best available truth, not 
authority but evidence, not words but works; and 
more and more religion is demanding these things. 
The time may come sooner than some of us expect 
when in all things except spirit and purpose re- 
ligion may once more be a personal matter; when 
churches will welcome all "men of good-will"; 
when love of God and love of fellow men will be 
the one requirement for mutual fellowship and ser- 
vice. When that time comes religion and science 
will be at one. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 245 

C. The Outcome of Evolution 

Speculations as to the meaning and outcome of 
evolution have no place in science but they do 
occupy a prominent and legitimate place in every 
mind. We are creatures of a day ; we catch glimpses 
of great world processes which come out of eternity 
and go into eternity and it would be presumptuous 
to suppose that we could wholly comprehend these 
processes or forecast their outcome. And yet as 
we may reason from the present to the past, so we 
may justly, though perhaps imperfectly, reason 
from present and past to the future. 

The past course of evolution together with the 
evidences for teleology in nature are strong argu- 
ments for a plan or purpose in evolution, the ulti- 
mate unfolding of which is probably beyond our 
power to conceive. This purpose is, at least in 
part, already indicated. Man is the highest product 
of evolution. There is good reason to beheve that 
no higher animal will ever appear upon the earth. 
Although the limits of individual evolution may 
have been reached, at least for the present, there 
is good evidence that we have barely begun to 
realize the possibilities of social evolution. To a 
large extent mankind holds the power of controlling 
its destiny on this planet. Evolution through all 
the ages has been leading to a higher intellectual, 
ethical, and spiritual life. There is no reason to 



245 EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

believe that it wiU change its course to-morrow. 
But as in former ages progress passed from indi- 
vidual cells to many-celled organisms, so now it 
is passing from individual organisms to society. 
While we cannot see the goal we can see our present 
duty. 

The religion of evolution deals with this world 
rather than with the next. It prays "Thy king- 
dom come, thy wiU be done on earth.^^ It seeks to 
build here and now "The City of God." It looks 
forward to a time when "Righteousness shall 
cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." It 
looks forward to unnumbered ages of human prog- 
ress upon the earth, to ages of better social organi- 
zation, of increasing specialization and co-operation 
among individuals and races and nations, to ages of 
greater justice and peace and altruism. Indeed 
the religion of evolution is nothing new, but is the 
old religion of the world's greatest leaders and 
teachers, the religion of Confucius and Plato and 
Moses and especially of Christ which strives to 
develop a better and nobler human race and to 
establish the kingdom of God on the earth. 

To us it is given to co-operate in this greatest 
work of all time and to have a part in the triumphs 
of future ages, not merely by improving the condi- 
tions of individual life and development and educa- 
tion, but much more by improving the ideals of 
society and by breeding a better race of men 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 247 

who will ''Mould things nearer to the heart's 
desire." 

The inspiring visions of prophets and seers con- 
cerning a new heaven, a new earth, and a new hu- 
manity find confirmation and not destruction in 
human evolution viewed in retrospect and in pros- 
pect, for the past and present tendencies of evolu- 
tion justify the highest hopes for the future and 
inspire faith in the final culmination of this great 
law in 

" — one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 



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